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Religion
BY
J.
MACBRIDE STERRETT,
souls'
D.D., Litt.D.,
D. C.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY; FOUNDER AND NOW ASSOCIATE RECTOR OF ALL
57
CJOPTRIOHT, 1922,
Published April,
1922.
J. Little
in
Religion
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
To The
REV. H. H. D. STERRETT
Rector of All Souls' Parish
Washington, D.
C.
AND
TO THE DEVOTED MEMBERS OP
OUR
COMMON FLOCK
484263
PREFACE
'^ork
hand He nor commends, nor
of his
Her
every act/^
these lines of
Emerson would
suffice
for a preface. But have to PERSONALLY v^ritten Ithis book. consider whom I have
those for
before giving it the personal touch. I overcame this hesitation for two reasons (1) it is largely a personal confession of a spiritual pilgrimage to a haven
:
I hesitated
much
not storm tossed with doubt; (2) I believe that the practical purpose of the book will thereby be best sei^ved.
that
is
a convinced modernist in religion. I have been through all the doubts and difficulties that assail the modern mind as regards conventional types of institutional I
Christianity.
am
I see
how
man
of
modem
in some
culture
may
in any form rather than in none, authoritative religion if he cares to forward the Kingdom of God on earth, which was the master passion of the Master.
God
form of an
who do not. Very many of the university and college-bred men and women are floundering in a state of doubt raised by the results of the new
But
there are multitudes
'
learning and the twentieth century world-view. This has brought them to the stage of enlightenment as regards conventional forms. Too often it leaves them in the stage
of clearing these out,
his-
viii
PEEFACE
might enable them to make a synthesis between the new and the old. I have written chiefly with such in mind, both those who are alienated from any church and those who are silently protesting conformists within one. The alienation of the laboring class from the church is much greater in this country though less than in
torical spirit that
England.
I regret that I
am
more vital question. That class had the Gospel preached to it.
and
it
churches, or even to the fine chapels built to segregate from the churches of the other classes.
text, "Sir,
we
on the protean forms of Jesus as seen by the Evangelists, the Epistolists, the early Fathers and those of medieval and Reformation times. Some wanted me to publish it Nay, I said, I would sooner write a book and that I would never do again. Then many old intellectual and religious friends urged the task upon me. They argued that my ten years work as a professor of ethics and Christian evidences in a theological seminary, and my seventeen years of university work as a professor of philosophy had given me some fitness to do just this work. Finally it got on my conscience. On Sunday,
October 15th, the tenth anniversary of the founding of All
Souls' parish, I said a temporary vale to active parish work for three months while I wrote the book. Ten years before
would
and opened the door of active work of the ministry again, a work which has been such a blessed and soul-saving work for me. But now I should follow the dictate of conscience and unlock the door
of
study, or rather take a bit of it into the closet and there make another book. So I "Cast the bantling on
my my
my
the rocks."
PEEFACE
I
ix
But I am still incurably I meet many cultured people who are likewise religious. so. But they do not find how they can nourish their religion in what seems to them to be outworn forms, what
am
a convinced modernist.
though the
"Hound of Heaven
still
And
unperturbed pace,
But they
century. accept the twentieth century world-view, ensee with twentieth cenriched by those of other ages.
We
We
tury eyes and only somewhat darkly with the eyes of other centuries. Some are tempted to cast into the sea all the older visions of the Christ and dogmas about him
as obsolete for them, as is nearly the whole of the old materia medica to the modem physician. That they may
well cast into the sea and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Be none the worse off; only it might be worse for the
fishes."
But we cannot do this with the materia medica for souls. At our peril only could we do so foolish a thing.
This would be as foolish as for one to unhouse himself before a new house was ready or to cut the umbilical cord that binds to some mother church or to attempt to form a new church and creed and cult, which would soon have all the faults of the old one. We should be thankful heirs of all the ages before we can be the slaves of none. God here and now for us, largely because of God there and then, Praisers of the present, we should be at least sympathetic appraisers of the past, though never mere lauda;
X
tores temporis acti.
PEEFACE
We
must build on the old Gospel
foundations and largely with the materials of past ages. We must have the historical spirit, and the sense of the
organic continuity of developing institutions as forms of nurturing and propagating the idea, the kernel which the
husks enshrine.
modernists in the Church of Rome, as it the Church of England. Modernists are not destructive critics.
now
does those in
at the
They aim
adaptation of the old to the modern religious needs. The old has always grown. But it grows too slowly now. It has always been so. Institutions are always, and that
Radicalism without something conrightly, conservative. The mere twentieth censerved is vain and destructive.
tury man is as provincial as a mere tenth or sixteenth matricide is fully as unholy as the concentury man. servative Herods and rulers of the Jews. Jesus came not
ways
of mother church is
:
not matricidal.
To
As
profes-
sor of apologetics, I began very much as Tyrrell says he did as a conservative, battling fiercely against all attacks on the present forms of Christianity. I slaughtered
the exponents of the higher criticism. When I got through, I found that I had learned much from the enemy. Fas est ah hoste doceri. I found
Strauss and
Renan and
that
with them all was vitiated by special pleading, that blurs honest vision. I was ready to exclaim with evidences of Christianity, I am weary Coleridge, ".
my
fight
Apologetics on the old lines of proof from prophecy and miracle, like that of the hard church type of ^'believe or be damned," came to seem like an imperof the word."
tinence.
subject needed a new orientation, which would include aU that one learned from honest
The whole
PEEFACE
critics
xi
and opponents.
At
all
man
an interrogation point.
of to-day shrugs his mind into The whole thing must be evaluated
differently, if not within the church then church if it comes to this without
and woe
to the
Well, we are asked what are modernists going to do about it? What is their base line? Their base line is
that of the necessity and value of the church. Their is to help modernists who are within and the many
aim
who
now
are outside the church, and also to help the church to help them. They are aiming to get a modus vivendi, or, rather an entente cordiale, not merely a diplomatic but a
vital
who
are honestly compelled to accept the results of critical study of Christian history and the Bible.
modern
I write as a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, thankful and appreciative of her as the best mother for me as long as she remains a Protestant
Church and does not yield official authority into the hands of quite a large and much protesting body of Romanizers
now
title.
in her fold.
Church of
short time ago one of these clerical brethren approached me on the golf links and said, "You are a priest of the Church, are you not?" "No," I said. Shortly I
protest that she is the Catholic are laboring thus to change her
added, "I
Church." the term (sacerdos) but a priest in the Prayer Book sense of the term, where priest is but presbyter writ short. I sometimes thank God that I was born and bred, till early manhood, in the Presbyterian Church. I think that apart from the devout religious training it gave me, it has, throughout my fifty years' service in the ministry of our church, saved me from a too provincial attitude towards
a presbyter of the Protestant Episcopal I meant that I was not a priest in his sense of
am
xii
PKEFACE
There
is
other churches.
scension in our attitude towards our sister churches, which the late Bishop Greer characterized as "Snobbishness de-
rived from the attitude of the Anglican church to all nonconformist churches." That was the attitude of Anglicans
here in colonial days. In reporting to the Home Board in England, they wrote: "We are all good churchmen here; we maintain an offensive attitude towards them that are without." Such an attitude now, I fancy, is taken as amusing rather than offensive by those without. It took our church much time to overcome the bane of ecclesiastical
toryism. I love the Episcopal Church for reasons too numerous to mention and could not easily feel at home elsewhere.
I would do but
for the self-aggrandizement of the I do not like ecclesiasticism. official part of any church. On intellectual and ethical grounds I am a Christian myslittle
tic,
upon whom rest lightly many old forms that trouble others. The Episcopal Church has been stigmatized as
;
either politics or religion. as regards religion. It has been called the roomiest sort
of a church.
It holds
many men
of
many
:
minds, with
parties enough to form three or four churches a party that teaches and practices Komanism, minus only the Pope; and a party that is Protestant to the core; and a school,
rather than an organized party, known as the Broad churcb school. That is her glory, so long as she can hold them all
together without yielding complete dominance to any one of them. Perhaps it was because I saw it to be the room-
church that I entered its ministry fifty years ago. It affords freedom within elastic bounds. It affords freedom
iest
If some are strangling in their own folds, I could frankly say, Come in, if you really think
PEEPACE
that
Grod, stay out.
xiii
you could do better service for the Master and his Kingdom. But if you look at it as the easiest, then, pray
have already our full share of idlers. An apology is due for my frequent reference to the Episcopal Church. I know more about her than I do about her sister Protestant churches. I am keenly interested in keeping her Protestant, till she can take another step forward and become The Modernist Episcopal Church, instead of crabbing backward to Eome. Besides being an appeal to modernists this book is meant to be an appeal to all the churches to recognize, retain and seek to gain modernists to give them a welcome as a much needed dynamic element in their ovtu ultra-conservative
;
We
life,
is
progress.
J.
Macbeide Steerett.
CONTENTS
PAGB
I.
In^troduction
II.
Modernism
Polity
20
38 47
III.
IV.
Doctrine
V.
VI.
A Personal Confession
What
Cult
Is
64
78
God Like ?
VII
VIII.
96
116
Church of England
123 148
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
....
170
179
one who is a thankful heir of all the Christian ages, but feels that he should not be the slave of any one of them.
Christian modernist
is
"By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance."
Erasmus.
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfils Himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
Tennyson.
MODERNISM
IN
RELIGION
I
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTORY
term modernist may seem to be rather arrogant. It was at first used by some Jesuits as a term of reproach and later adopted by Pope Pius X, who defined modernism as "the synthesis of all heresies," and "the adversary of the church." However, the term Modernist is a good one to apply to men of modern culture, embracing, as it does, a knowledge and an appreciation of the cultures of other ages and religions. For the modemism of which we speak is distinctively a religious movement. On its intellectual side it is an attempt at a synOf thesis between the new learning and the old religion. course there are modernists who are not religious and who have little knowledge or appreciation of the culture of
THE
They are merely twentieth century men, with undue emphasis upon scientific knowledge. They live and
other ages.
think in a shut-in valley, ignorant that beyond the enclosing mountains of the twentieth century, there are other
and other ages and men. "Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute/' But they are not embraced in the term modernism, as it has become technically applied to a religious movement. Modernists hold no brief for the superiority of merely
valleys
MODEROTSM IK
KELIGIO:tT
are apt to be just as purblind as praisers of the past. No more is something good or true because it is new, than that something is old and therefore neither good nor true. The
new form an organic process. Modernists do not propose to set up any one stage of this process as being true, when taken out of its connection with the others. They grant that in many ways the merely modern age is
old and
not as good as some ages past. Whether men of this age are morally, intellectually, religiously, esthetically or even
economically better than those of some other ages is an open question. Who would not sooner be a citizen of an old Greek city with good laws, than to be one of many of
our modern ring-ruled cities? Wlio would not prefer dwelling where he could look on works of classic art sit in the Academy and listen to Plato see the Greek plays and read the Greek poets; be a Greek cosmopolite, while also a country gentleman attending to his neighboring farms, and having about him men and women of culture, the latter clad simply but elegantly in flowing robes. What person of culture would not sooner dwell there than in the rush and whirl of a modem city with its jazz and scanty garb; with its vulgarities of architecture, and some other arts? Because we have such a heap of knowledge is no proof that we are more intellectual than the Greeks of old. Because we can travel eighty miles an hour by train, or two hundred miles by aeroplane, or, as most do in our cities,
;
forty miles an hour in frightful subways, is no proof that we are living well, or even as well as some of other ages.
With
all
our gains
we
suffer
many
losses.
Emerson has
put it all in a simile. We have invented the carriage, but have lost the use of our limbs. However, every epochal age has its modem spirit, its Zeitgeist, and its modem
world-view, destined, in turn, to become a traditional one. The Zeitgeist of any isolated age is only temporary, but
INTKODUCTOKY
there are certain dominant ideas in every such age, which become a sort of framework in which all experience is set
and which furnish the modern dialect in which it is exThese ideas form an enswathing atmosphere, pressed. which affects not only scholars but also the general public.
The
pessimistic
is
Progress
of St. Paul's says that "the myth of our form of apocalyptism," that is that the
Dean
golden age
is at
hand.
But
if
we
as the process through which any organic thing advances from a less to a more completed state of itself; realizing more fully its real nature, as Aristotle would say as the
acorn does in
its
that Progress is a wise conception for us to use in the study of any history. It will not always prove that the
thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. Neither does it lead us to doubt that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs." Pessimism dethrones God.
Fate or chance or the whirl of blind atoms in mechanical dance ascends the throne. What is a safe judgment as to man under the category of Progress? Has he not progressed from the conditions of his ancestor, the Pithecanthropos of the glacial period, and then in the more general Man has, at least, dropped the progress of the race.
Pithec, with which he was hyphenated many thousand It years ago. Progress stands as a good modern term.
takes a long look over a very large historical map to see Periods of decline, of the general progress of mankind. reversion to lower types, of deformations and rottenness
The pessimist fixes his are a part of the whole process. gaze on these and says "no progress." So too the kindred conception of Evolution is worth while using along with
modern conception of the unity and order of nature; so too the conception of the Divine immanence in the fields of nature and man. Then there is the modern conception
the
of Relativity in two senses, (1) that of the relativity of any
modeii:n^ism
i:^
eeligio:^
institution to the needs of the different ages through which it persists and (2) as being relative at any time, to the
whole process, forbidding the identification of any one stage with the ultimate form. Then in the study of institutions
torical
and
literatures there is
what
is
known
as the His-
method. Put yourself as far as you can at the point of view of those in any age that you are studying. See as far as possible with their eyes; get their general world-view. How did any institution or any body of laws or doctrines come about? What was the character, time, place and needs of the situation ? And what did they mean to those who formulated and to those who accepted them ? Their past forms are to be estimated by their contemporary situations and problems. Their solutions are to be recognized as upon the whole the best they could make and
the best for their times.
The
of this method.
See old forms of institutions, creeds, laws, as men of those ages saw them. Banish the spirit of envy and pride, appreciate their work and their vision. This An spirit does not live in the blindly conservative mind. English clergyman being asked his opinion of the Salvation Army replied "Could any one imagine the Apostles To this as officers in such a remarkable organization?'' it was aptly replied that one could as easily imagine the Apostles toiling in the slums of London as he could imagine them as Archbishops with their five and twenty thou:
sand pounds a year, their palaces, and their seats in the House of Lords. The historic sense enables one to imagine both of these positions. There is the broader, more divine conception of God's revelation in the past to children of all ages and climes
free study of other religions. There is the broadening knowledge of the complexity and greatness of the human soul reached by the New
that has
mTKODUCTOEY
Psychology. Then there are the inductive and the pragmatic methods the one of them as reaching, and the other as holding to certain positions. Whether the best methods
or not, they are methods that men are using in place of the a-priori method. Of all these dominant modem conceptions, I
venture to say a few words on the conception of the Divine immanence. That is an heritage from the Greek Fathers of the early church. They identified the
Jewish Messiah with the Greek Logos. It nearly all began with the Gospel of St. John. "In the beginning was the word" (Lo^os). All things were made by Him. They conceived the Logos as not only in man, but in all nature giving it unity, order and purpose. In spite of the overemphasis placed upon God's transcendence in the theology of Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin, there ever continued with some Christian thinkers the conception of the divine immanence. One throws off the intolerable nightmare, the incubus of the long regnant Augustinianism, when he uses the conception of the Divine immanence. It transforms all of one's theology. Really the two conceptions are but the two halves of one conception, divorced only in man's Transthoughts; two halves of one transcending whole. cendency has been so over emphasized as to exclude God from his creation, except by miraculous interference with its laws. It leaves one with an absentee Almighty on his throne in heaven. Immanency also has been so over emphasized as to confine Him within nature. But it is chiefly in nature that this conception is being used to-day. As men of science discover laws in nature, we say that they are reading God's thoughts after Him. There is no chance
question of interest here concerns the relation of these two conceptions. They are of the same nature
in nature.
The
and substance.
with
God above
There
is
God
below.
no need to resort
to
any vulgar
6
sort of
MODERmSM
IN
RELIGIOljq'
wonders to prove His continuous presence and acThe supernatural is present in the natural. There tivity. is no need to fear. Come what may in nature's way, if not interfered with by ignorant or wicked men, one will fear no evil, even when he walks through the valley of the shadow of death. Always the everlasting, the ever-present arms are underneath. God is immanent also in the experience of man, in all human history, in all institutions for man's uplift the same God who is also above. That is
that modernists conceive of nature, and of man in his ascent out from and above physical nature. Then as
the
way
periods of decline and of rottenness ; of stagnation and inefficiency ; of degeneracy and decay are clearly seen in the history of all hu:
man
institutions.
fain read the history of the church as one Df continuous development from its fontal origin, rather than
One would
its type.
The
latter is
way that Hamack and Sabatier and Francis A. ^ Henry seem to read it. They voice the crab cry, back to the primitive church. But we cannot thus de-modernize
ourselves or the church.
Back to Jesus, the font, the principle of our religion, we must surely go for inspiration and fruitfulness of our religious life. That is our primal That is the type with which we must religious heritage. always test any stage of the religious life. But backward
in polity, creed and cult
*I
we should
am
in hearty
sympathy with
all these
But I cannot insist on going back to Jesus as the fountain of life. understand how it is possible to discard all the historical developments of Christianity in the lines of polity, doctrine and cult. The volume by Francis A. Henry on "Jesus and the Christian
Religion," really gets at the heart of the matter. But in considering Christianity as o ivay of life as Jesus' way of life he takes rather a pessimistic view of the historical developments of Christianity, as upon the whole, being perversions.
IIsTTEODUCTORY
torical acquisitions. the kernel. All that
These are the preservative husks for we can do is to see if they are func-
tioning well, at any given time. The kernel could not survive without its incarnation, its embodiment in form of
the vital thing. Back to Jesus for the kernel, then through the Christian centuries for the necessary serving and propagating husk of That is the way we read the history of embodiment.
an organization.
It,
of course,
is
Christianity. And when we do so, we shall not be pessimistic though our optimism may be greatly chastened. Progress is so slow.
"The mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small.'*
starting with a life-cell, trace its growth through the two factors of heredity and environment. Take the church of to-day with its past heritage in its twenBiologists,
tieth century environment. Environment is that in which And this, or rather adaptation to it, it lives in any age.
herself
Jewish environment, though only for a short time. Then it adapted itself to its environment of Greek thought and culture; then to that of the Roman world; and then to that of Reformation times, and thus kept a living and a fruitful organism. If this age is really an epochal one, it is a fair question to ask how the church is adapting That it must do in herself to the present environment. order to continue a living, ministrant church to people of
this
age.
adapted to
Environment sustains when the organism is And this means change and greater effiit.
And
it is
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
:
I need not raise the question "What is the matter with the church to-day ?" That has heen raised long and widely and loudly. The press for the last five years has been prolific of books and articles on this topic. "What must the
church do to be saved?"
is
saved,
or so saved, I take it, as to make it a more efficient power for saving souls and for advancing God's Kingdom on
earth.
is
the church survive the changing order?'' the title of another volume. "Shall we stand by the
"Can
church ?"
"What
is
"Why
other
titles of
of another volume by a clergyman of the Episthe Rev. Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin is "The copal church Church Enchained." It is a passionate appeal to the
title
The
church to unloose the chains now binding the Christ within her chains forged by logic; chains of narrow definitions
and of exalted pride and ecclesiasticism iron chains of bigotry and golden chains of luxury. Such an enchained church is a church impotent. "The term churchman is not
;
always the synonym of Christian. The church may be writ large, and the Christ be but faintly inscribed in the
heart."
Read Church
the most piteous cry in the volume entitled "The in the Furnace," by seventeen church chaplains
ing cry of all failed, but that the church, as the chief propagandist of the Gospel of Jesus, has failed. Her failure has come
speak further on. The prevailthese voices is, not that Christianity has
Of
this I
largely from her swathing herself in the outgrown wrappings of ecclesiastical traditions which are obsolete for the
modern mind.
meet the needs of less educated people. What a great work is to be done here It is a far to enable her to be their helper and leader.
She has
failed also to
i:tTTKODUCTOEY
more important need than that of her meeting the religious needs of the more educated moderns. The late Bishop Franklin S. Spaulding published a sermon on the need of ^^Christianizing the Church" on this social and economic side. He was a fiery prophet of economic righteousness.
Pew
can forget his red-hot message at the time of the meeting of the General Convention in 1914. ^^We come to a General Convention of Capitalists. * * * The church,
if
be a real power in the twentieth century, must cease to be merely the almoner of the rich and become the
she
is to
Too early returned to heaven, a like mantle is still worn by another fiery prophet, the present Bishop of
Michigan, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Charles D. Williams, president of the Church League for Industrial Democracy. God bless his work. I only wish that I were fitted to take part in it. But the Christianizing of the church so as to make her ministrant to the religious life of the smaller class of well educated people is also imperative. These people are saying things like the following: "Dogmas that are obsolete and no longer nourishing" ; "the ruck of obsolete theories
about Jesus"
vation";
"canned goods"
"stereotyped plans of
sal-
"crystallized and petrified orthodoxies, now largely empty of meaning." The church must purge herself of all these, if she is to be ministrant to people of
found fault with for holding to a static conception of the church, instead of a dynamic one; for the spending so much labor on the work of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement; for the use of "creeds in
culture.
is
She
As
may
it
dominant criticism to-day voices an impatience with the undue emphasis placed by the church upon conventional conceptions and dogmas about Him? She places in the
10
MODEROTSM
m religio:n"
forefront doctrines in the traditional language of other ages and demands that they be swallowed as they are,
however unpalatable and indigestible. Such are some common indictments made by hosts of modernists both within and without the church. I have received a letter from a high-minded and a highly cultivated gentleman who is a member of one of the
churches.
churches
protesting
And
him
in all the
and begging the church to give them the Christ of the Gospels and His living message, and that message interpreted in language "understanded by the people" of this He fails to get the craved moral and religious reage. action, when he attends church, because he does not feel en rapport with the forms and language in which the Gospel is presented in the church where he is a regular atIt does not appeal to him, and he craves to be appealed to. He loves and woi> ships the Master, but he sees His face much marred in the dogmatic forms in which He is presented in the churches.
tendant.
Here
is
his letter.
is
of thinking men who in this day are not reached by our own or any other church. What is the reason? If it is a lack in our own church,
"There
a large
number
what
"It
is
is
that lack?
easy to draw an indictment of perhaps to prove most of them, but that we are looking for the constructive.
many
is
counts, destructive
and and
other day I chanced upon a statement of our difficulty, in one of the most talked of novels of the moment. That statement is
this:
it's
The
*The remedy's the old remedy. The old God. But more than that. It's light; more light. The old
revelation
to the
INTEODUCTOKY
11
old world, and told in terms of the old world's understanding, mystical for ages, steeped in the mystical, poetic for minds receptive of nothing beyond story and allegory want a new revelation in terms of the and parable. want light, light.' Do new world's understanding.
We
We
you suppose an age that knows wireless and can fly is going to find spiritual sustenance in the food of an age that thought thunder was God's speaking ? ^'Sacerdotalism, medievalism, ritualism, an over insistence upon the words "the church," and even man-made
creeds are not the light that will lighten this generation. need ''What is that Light ? It is of course Christ.
We
beautiful in our beloved church, but for my own part I am ready to break the oldest and most beautiful stained glass window in any church if it dims
is
the Light that should shine out. As Bishop Williams said 'Let us not build in his memorable sermon at All Souls'
in.'
"Can't some one say the word that will help carry to
the intelligenzia of the day some knowledge of, and some belief in the Light, whom dusty, travel-stained, and tired Paul in Antioch preached to those who knew no God, but
so
altar to
him ?"
I should say that men of modem culture need the GosSouls rich in pel as much as do the less cultured people.
culture are worth saving as well as souls poor in culture. And the church needs them. She should have room for all
those
who
are steeped in modern thought. But she cannot if she insists upon assent to belated conceptions ;
formed by men of a very different world-view. The modernist has a conscience in the matHe will not assent to what he does not think to be ter. true. He would only enter the church with head erect and It would be well for the with conscience unashamed.
12
MODEEmSM
IIST
RELIGIO:^'
of the traditional views
many
of Christianity are relative and admit of modifications and reinterpretations by the new learning.
Bishop Wilmer was once talking to a man about his becoming a member of the church. "But," said the man, "I can't swallow all of your creeds." Then, said the
Bishop, "there must be something wrong with your swallow." But no, I think these modernists might well answer
something wrong with the thing to be swallowed. It is too antique and bulky and indigestible. Modernists within the church can only swallow the creed whole by
there's
giving a symbolical interpretation to some of its clauses, which were formerly taken literally. Thus as to Christ's bodily ascension into heaven with flesh and bones, and His
sitting at the right hand of God, and the articles, "I believe in the resurrection of the body," body meaning flesh
and "he descended into hell." All these are now taken symbolically. Taken literally in the sense they had at first, they would indeed be hard to swallow. As Bishop Williams said "When I say the Apostles creed, for example, I may believe somewhat differently about God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost than the Christian Father
(
aap^
of the fourth century, or my Christian brother in the next pew. Creeds are symbols in the double sense of the word,
are flags to follow, not>. fences to keep our straying feet within the safe paths of orthodoxy. As such they are constantly to be reinterpreted, with the expanding enlightenment of the ages and the
They
^ growing experience of the individual believer." But when I present this view of the duty of reinterpreting old creeds through new conceptions, some men have
*
the Rt. Rev. Charles D. Williams, preached at the consecration on AH Souls' Memorial Church, Washington, D. C, October 25, 1914.
From a sermon by
INTKODUCTORY
said,
13
"!N'o,
"But I fear
that
not," has heen my reply. It cost me nights and years of mental and religious agony in trying to preserve the strict form of orthodoxy in which I was
God, I
am
'No,
am
Few, indeed, are so to-day. I might almost I heartily thank my heavenly Father, that He hath
I might say that I was called into a state of salvation by a return to the conceptions of the early Greek Fathers of the Alexanout of that state of damnation.
me
drian School, and so relieved from the damnable state of trying to believe what may be called either orthodoxy, or
Augustinian theology. Verily it has been the lengthened shadow of this powerful mind that has long and widely
gloomy shadow over the Christian world. It was the Greek thought that formulated the Nicene Creed. The root conception was that of the indwelling of the divine Logos in nature and in man, finally incarnated in Jesus of Judea. All human history, both sacred and secucast a
lar,
is
The
creeds and codes of all nations are records of the progress of this education. The final full and complete revelation
But
the
same process of
a gradual education of his disciples into a fuller knowledge of it, has been going on through the centuries and is going on through our century. No finality as to forms of
knowledge of it by men in any century, can be accepted. Thus far and no farther dares no living church say. Finality means sterility. And a sterile church cannot fructify.
We
history of Christianity and give them relative worth chiefly for their own times, but never finality.
There is no quod ubique, quod semper, quod ah omnibus form of the faith. That conception is a fiction of lazy
14
souls,
MODEKOTSM
and a
;
i:tT
KELIGIOIT
tool
used to
of thought a steam-roller used for partisan purposes. Of absolute infallibility in such knowledge there is none. Infallibility
!
and of artful
politicians,
who
refuse to
acknowledge the work of the Logos in the movements of human thought and experience in this century, and anathematize all attempts to reset the old truth in new light. Religious men outside the church who rightly decline to endure the whip of such pretended infallibility, often retort that the church is often more tolerant of imperfect Christian lives in her members than she is of the imperfect creeds of those who would gladly become members. worldly-minded man of social influence or wealth who would swallow any creed, might enter the fold easily and become a pillar of the church. "Money talks'^ even to the church. Surely there was abundant material for such a
Cup."
The church
to be a teacher in
church learning all say that she has always taught the identical doctrine the faith once delivered as a jewel in a casket is to say that she has always been a static church. But her history shows that she has not been thus unwise. Identity is the category of deadness. No living thing ever remains identiIt lives and grows by adapting itself to a cal with itself. changing environment. So we should relieve ourselves of the incubus of infallibility and identity that make for a moribund form of Christianity. lN"o infallible church or
Bible or reason
that is
what we are
left with.
But we
are also left with the progressive stages of knowledge of the revelation of the abiding fullness of the Word made
flesh.
And
is
not yet.
IlSrTEODUCTOKY
15
Let us dare, however, to see Jesus with our own eyes, even as His first disciples saw Him, with their then modern eyes, colored as they were by their Jewish world-view, even
in the traditions given about Jesus in their Gospels. only replace their Jewish conceptions with our modern
We
Greek Fathers of the early church soon did each new view of the Master being ministrant to the best giving of His message to the men of their days. Let the church to-day give us a view more ministrant to our
ones, even as the
;
needs than that of any other age can be. We are, or we should be, the heir of all other ages. We should learn to
appreciate their point of view and their portrait of Christ. We should be the ancients, to be genuinely moderns. In
to romanticize, to recover
much from
lost.
a deformation, a loss This, the wiser, the less hot-headed successors of the re-
The
old
maxim
is
true in
many
matters, "the vanquished give laws to the victors." This gave justifiable ground for some of the work of the Anglocatholic party. But no cultured mind can romanticize to the full de-reformize the Reformation or return to either
; ;
the primitive or the medieval form of the church. The way is through them with the historical spirit of apprecia-
and thus forward with Jesus, in the modern spirit. It is needless to enlarge further upon the difficulties that modernists find in the traditional and static conception
tions of the church.
am
who
are
incurably religious as well as intellectual. For the many who are merely intellectual and for the more who are
in the pithecanthropopic stage of imperfection and in the state of sin, in glorifying instead of trying to rise out of
that state
;
trying to
make
16
MODERMSM
m EELIGION
of comfort and pleasure. Here we Lave the vulgar pleasant vices of the many and the gilded vices of the upper classes ; the smart set and all who are smarting to get
way
into
them social climbers. For all such the need is for a John the Baptist, a Billy Sunday thundering the woes of damnation and calls to repentance. With a critical appreciation of the church of past ages, we say to modernists, stand by the church. With an appreciation of the difficulties thrown in the way of modern-
we say to the church, stand by the modernists who are trying to make you a living church in this age by modernists,
at least trying to modernize your interpretaizing you tion of the traditional interpretation of conceptions that were good in other ages; live now, as you have done in
modernist
a religious man who is Definitions of modempast ages, but the slave of none. isms range all the way from that of Pope Pius X, "Modis
the synthesis of all heresies," to that of Sabatier, [^"Modernism is not a system or a new synthesis: it is an
is
ernism
orientation."
Modernism stands for a new spirit and for modem methods in the study and teaching of religion and
ethics.
Surely
unless
ing.
modem
does not stand for a set of negations, learning negatives some of the older learnit
modem
It does not that they be incorporated with older views. offer a new set of dogmas, but it does ask for a modern in-
more
it.
than theology and must be distinguished from It alters our scientific, historical and theological outvital
INTKODUCTOKY
17
look, but leaves our personal relation to Christ untouched. It is a vitalizing spirit making all things new, and an intellectual method rather than a formulated creed. It is
see things. "The hot emotion of one generation is the cold authority of the next one." And nothing cold is vitalizing.
the
way modernists
Modernism seeks to meet difficulties already raised by our modern world-view, rather than to raise up new ones. Mrs. Humphry Ward said: "Modernism is the attempt of the modern spirit, acting religiously, to refashion Christianity, not outside, but inside the warm limits of the ancient churches, to secure not a reduced, but a trans-
formed Christianity." Modernism thinks it is something like blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to deny that He is
speaking through
men in the twentieth century as strongly and inspiringly as to men of other ages. The Catholic Encyclopedia says, "A modernist is one
his
own age above antiquity." Father Tyrell says, "By a modernist I mean man of any sort who believes in the possibility
who esteems
a church-
theological synthesis, consistent with the data of historico-critical research." Again the Catheffort to find a
new
Encyclopedia, speaking of modernism as an aggressive party in the Eoman church, says, "Modernism aims at a radical transformation of human thought in relation to God, man, the world and life here and hereafter." It should be noted that these modernists generally are Chrisolic
tian mystics. In the Holy Sacrament they realize that Christ dwells in them and they in Him. Ofttimes this mystical life is nourished in the sacrament
18
MODERlSriSM
In
their
m RELIGIOIT
closet, at
home, on a train and in unemployed moments, or with a few others gathered together in His name, they realize His promise '^there am I in the midst of them." They house themselves well enough in any form of the church, very often in the Roman church. Sometimes they seem more like hermit crahs. But modern mystics love a love to realize their heritage in its past, living church and their at-homement in its living work in the present. They do not desire a new church or creed or cult. But at least they do desire a modern interpretation of these
Lord's Supper.
own
into conceptions significant to the people of this generation, and then a gradual change in form and language. love the prayers and hymns of all ages. They also care for modern ones, voicing present thanks and needs. They are glad that their minds are such palimpsests, that
They
the
new writing
in ages past.
"I accept the universe," said Margaret EuUer. Some one repeated this to Carlyle. His response was: "Egad. She had better." We of the twentieth century had better accept our modern world-view, underwritten, though it should be in still legible letters by those of other times. By it we are surrounded. In its atmosphere we think, and Modernists are simply Christians act and worship best.
are trying to live, and to get others to live, in better harmony with our present universe of thought. And we
who
to be a
church learning
new
that have gone on through the Christian centuries of the bitter feelings and bloody and fiery persecution of fellow
Christians,
aroused over formal intellectual statements about Jesus and His Evangel, I almost feel ashamed to
mTKODUCTORY
19
enter again this war of words. I am sure that every devout disciple of the Master, whether a traditionalist or a modernist, has times when he blushes, as he thinks how
much more
of his time and energies are spent in arguing about Jesus than in living as His disciple. Let every one
rather seek to translate his meager creed about Jesus into deed. Jesus never set His disciples to do the former. The
church which is more tolerant of an imperfect life than All of an imperfect creed, has little of His tolerance. creeds are imperfect. Jesus left us no intellectual com? pend of doctrines. "Be ye therefore perfect even as youi Father which is in heaven is perfect." The disciples found one casting out devils in Christ's name. They told Jesus "we forbad him, because he followeth not us." But Jesus said, "forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a mighty work in my name that can lightly speak evil of me." He did not encourage heresy hunters. 'Nov does His holy spirit do so to-day. And we all are so much heresy hunters, fault-finders, critics of our fellow Christians' creeds, and so little critical of our deeds. Can we not imagine Jesus casting a pitying look upon us in our wranglings about the form of sound words ? Let us rather seek to cast out devils, and rejoice in seeking others to do the same, though they "follow not us." Let us seek to be better Christian mystics, "we in Christ and
in us, very members incorporate in His mystical body," which is the blessed company of all that are faithful in
He
CHAPTEK
II
MODERNISM
HAVE
who
recognizes
I
to
that he is heir of all the ages, but feels and that he ought to be the slave of none. As a child
knows
grown
manhood and its duties, he feels that he ought not to hold with mortmain the heritage received in an enclosed
example of the fathers in using it in modern ways that he may pass it on to the next age richer than when he received it. Here let me expand an illustration. A modern man becomes the heir of an old castle, erected, perhaps, on the foundation of an old Roman fortress, and built to meet the
needs of
times in successive ages. It stood completed during feudal times, for defensive and offensive warfare for the preservation and extension of the possessions of its
its
owners.
of feudalism some of
its
old
enjoyment of the amenities of life. Its defensive features were changed as new modes of warfare came with the discovery of gunpowder. Its cross-bows and catapults, its military engines and melted lead, were relegated to chambers for relics; its towers reduced from 200 to 30 feet
useless parts were replaced by new ones. thirteenth century more space was given for an
and
After the
marring
non.
its
it
to use
modem
can-
use for military purposes having ceased, it was made more habitable for modem men, by renovations and improvements. But there it stands as a
20
Later on,
MODEENISM
whole, a gloomy, forbidding fortress, with
21
its castellated
architecture; its moat and drawbridge and bastions; its outer and its inner bailey, in which were barracks and hos-
and chapel, storerooms and stables with fearsome dungeons beneath. It was handed over to its rightful heir in 1901. It had been his early home. But he had had his Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre abroad. Now he returns to take possession of it. He must take it as a whole and make it his palace-home. He may do some remodeling for the sake of convenience and make some restorations for the
pital
sake of architecture.
Some
need replacing and some of the old rooms renovation. Some he cannot use, except as museums, preserving the weapons and furniture of its different epochs. Its dungeons he may fill in or wall up. The old outside bailey he may turn into a flower garden, and the inner one into storerooms. Often he passes through all parts of the castle,
letting pride of ancestors and heritage warm his heart and nerve him to be as valiant in his day and generation as
he introduce the convenieiAces of modem housekeeping into some of the rooms, or perchance add a new wing to the old castle for this purpose but in keeping with its old architecture.
will
Yet
say,
why
ground and build a modem mansion, fitted with all modem improvements? He would do so if he had neither sentiment nor wisdom neither loyalty nor historical sense. Just how much or how little he may destroy or change depends on sentiment as well as nay more than on common sense. If he be a barbarian all will go. If he be a
:
man
as possible will be kept intact. Very recently the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings has been greatly stirred by the Bishop of of culture, as
filling in of
much
32
tlie
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
day of the Danes, has encircled the Episcopal palace at Fulham, That society offered to raise the two thousand pounds that would be needed to clean out and repair the
moat.
But the Bishop thinks that, considering the needs of the hosts of men out of work to-day, this would be a sinful expenditure. That is a matter of a good heart and
of good common sense. Previously another Bishop had converted a similar moat into a beautiful garden. Was
that a desecration
hesitant if
Perhaps these Bishops would be more the question concerned the filling in of some
?
of the noxious ecclesiastical pools in their domains. The heritage of an old castle coming to a modem
man
Here
the picture be transferred to the case of a modernist in an old church, redolent of the piety of ancestors who lived, fought and labored in it; full of historical aslet
nature.
He
will suffer
new much
that
is
the
much
out of tune with his religion, for the sake of He would that it affords for its nourishment.
seek rather to reform than to destroy. He would preserve and seek to transmit this heritage, increased and enlivened
by the
spirit of the
to build a
cultured
new modern
age, rather than aid any project one with all its crass vulgarisms of an unage,
new
the modernist here puts in a justifiable demurrer. That is all right from an academical, as well as from the
But
sentimental point of view. But it is not practicable. at the old castle. The growing city surrounds it.
Look
It is
It should either be conrelatively a blockade to progress. verted into a warehouse, or modernized throughout, or
The
river
on which
it
is built is
MODERNISM
filled
23
with steamboats of traffic or pleasure. The rest of the shore is lined with docks and more space for them is demanded. Or many guests or new members of the family are coming to the castle. Shall the heir house them in the old parts of the castle ? Can he give them a warm recep-
and gloomy rooms ? He may state his hisHe may apologize torical and sentimental view of them. for much, smile at much that he does not take very setion in its cold
riously.
feel at
home
in the renovated parts of the castle. he will renovate the whole of it.
If necessary
Christianity, we say, was the heir of the Jewish church. Really it was the heir of much more than that. But how
long did
What was preserve that heritage intact? Jesus' attitude to it? Did He not destroy it, while fulHow long filling its purpose in a new and larger way? did the early disciples offer the Gospel in its Jewish form,
it
in their missionary efforts? How much of its Levitical law, and its national cult, with its sabbath and circumcision, did the
dead."
new church keep ? "Let the dead bury their "Why seek ye the living among the dead ?'' Do
not these Gospel sayings voice the attitude of the Master and, later on, that of the Apostles, towards the old
heritage
?
Yes, we believe the demurrer of modernists is justifiable and should be sustained. The wise man's opinion is un-
modernist should be as patient with the church as he is with any other institution. Every institution carries with it a lot of old material that is regarded as outworn and is so interpreted. It is so imbedded in the old that it would be hard to separate the two. Besides the religious emotions cling to the old. Only in times of a
wise.
Still the
new
forms.
Again
mechanical an one to
24
apply
to
MODEROTSM IN RELIGION"
any
institution of the spirit of man to any ageorganism. Perhaps that of the chambered
my
soul.
As the
swift seasons
roll.
Leave thy-low-vaulted past. Let each new temple nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 'Till thou at length art free.
shell
by
life's
unresting sea."
The
Moreover
its
outgrown shell, till death comes. Body and soul together grow till death doth them part.
houseless, homeless Christian is rarely more than a lifeless abstraction. Christianity is a social religion. One
The
Christian no Christian.
no
both grow together grow into "a dome more vast," till The old shell does not vomit out the death doth part.
new
life.
tions.
The new shell does not forsake the old convoluThe shell enchains, but its chief function is to suslife.
serve as a picture of the modernist with a psychological knowledge of the relation of soul and body and an historical appreciation of the need and value
tain the
This
may
a picture, not a photograph of any church visible, though it arrogate to itself the title of Catholic.
of institutional
life.
But
the picture
is
taken too literally, the modernist will put in another justifiable demurrer. The nautilus wants to sail
if
But
MODEKlSriSM
and tries to and nearly
but with wliat an impediment. lifeless convolutions hold it down.
sail,
25
The
old
is
What
known
impede rapid marching, are the provisions of food and arms and
in the
army
baggage that are necessary to its maintenance. It casts aside all unnecessary food and baggage. It will have none of this sort of impedimenta. Think how much of this sort of impedimenta is being carried by all the churches. The Methodists have their outgrown Book of Discipline and are calling for a new one "conforming to twentieth century needs and thought.'' The Greek church and that of the Baptists are holding on to their scriptural but belated doctrine of immersion, the latter confining its use to only converted adults. The Presbyterians still present the Westminster Confession of faith as their standard. The EpisArticles of Religion in copalians will print the the back part of their Prayer Book, while many of all parties in that church hope that they will soon be printed
XXXIX
Hosts of Presbyterians
as-
senting to much in their standard. But when the Articles go out of the Prayer Book, as they have already gone out of authoritative belief, there still remains much of
their obsolete terminology imbedded in the various services. It would be difficult to expunge them. They are practically
XXXIX
But they give offense to any modernist who encysted. thinks that they are to be taken without many grains of salt. They are impediments to those within, and an obstruction to those without but wishing to enter the church. Something should be done to explain away their position of
them altogether. But the nautilus figure may mother church and to any church
afford
son,
26
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
tions in times of great strain, perhaps the birth-pains of a new convolution. Neither the murder of the new born
on the one hand nor matricide schism from the church on the other hand That is the way mother nature works in the nautilus. With man, there is always so much sinful selfishness and ca-
Holy Innocents
excommunication,
pricious willfulness; so much lust for autocratic power and so much lack of appreciation of a nurturing institution so much of the devil in it all, that the ideal is never
realized.
But, at
least, let it
But the modernist, while recognizing that he is the heir of all the ages, feels and knows that he ought not to be the mere slave of any one of them the apostolic, primi-
Though the
umbilical cord be unseverable, the mature man may stretch the mother apron strings till they break, without breaking
with the domestic circle. Rarely being an ascendant, sometimes more of a descendant from his parents in the way of moral character, the modernist is apt to know more and to know some things better than they know them, and many things that they never knew. Of knowledge in the higher sense of the term, this is often untrue. But he has had a broader education has studied in more fields, has
more
intellectual
and
this.
social cir-
They
re-
beyond and above their own station. Proud are the mothers who realize that their children know more than they do. And the children, because they have thus broken her apron strings and fared
worlds, as their parents did before them, will they cease to love and obey her? Must they believe that she is infallible in all spheres; that there is
forth to discover
new
MODEEmSM
27
nothing beyond her apron strings, in order to show her true Must one be an abject slave, a confilial reverence? formist to all mother's ideas and ways ? Must he not feel that he should bring all his new culture and lay it at
mother's feet as a tribute and a contribution to the domestic circle ? Parents exist to help their children and in turn
the children feel bound to help them in expansion of ideas as well as in ways of living. How the son, returning from
new
scenes, rejoices the mother's heart as she, with doting fondness, listens to his tales of different scenes and new
something that no son can do, if he remains forever tied to her apron strings; what no modernist can do if he is slave of any past age. He must inideas.
And
that
is
crease his heritage of the ages and leave it greater and richer to pass on to the next age. Slave of none, otherwise he cannot fulfil his duty as an heir. Slave of no institution if that institution is to be a
vital
an the church in any of her historical forms The modernist is historical castle, a chambered nautilus.
institution
lihe heir,
The
the newly forming convolution of the nautilus. But before working out these pictures into the frame of historical religious experience let me dwell a moment
filial
We
more
why
Catholics are
than Protestants are to their churches. We would fain explain it by her autocratic domineering over her members, by her official tyranny. But that is not the root cause. Let us admit that it is because of her mothering side, that they accept her ecclesiastical and doctrinal dicta. She mothers them better than do our Protestant churches mothers them too much, we think; keeps them
Kome
and morally.
The
more
loving.
The
28
ever
it
MODEROTSM
says, is the voice of
11^
RELIGIOISr
Because of
this,
God.
how
rarely she has occasion for heresy trials that mean, "get out of my house."
If any unmotherly church should say to me "get out," then temperamentally, as a Christian mystic, I might feel
like going to the almost creedless, cultless Quakers.
But
and worth of institutions, I might have to go to Rome, the mother of many Christian mystics, as well as the mother of so many repulsive doctrines and crude superstitions. Who would not be a Roman Catholic, if he could be a St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most Christlike of men But no, if one remembers the pathos of that life and the life of his regenerative order. Power was what Rome has always wanted. She ecclesiasticized the life out of St. Francis and out of his Order. In its present form it is utterly sterile. His Third Order, which he meant to be a socially regenerative one, is now a mere name. He was, it is true, bred in Rome, but she bled the life out of him and out of his Order. And official
with
her lust of worldly power. If she cannot mother her children to obedience then she smothers them to death. Thus she has smothered the whole of the
Rome
has never
lost
modernists within her realm. The only hope is that she will never be able to smother to death the form of Americanisme, under which her modernists flourished
in this country. Is it possible that the Latin heel can ultimately crush the American head?
Little need be said about the value, in fact the necessity, of institutions for the education of the individual and the
race.
writ large in every place of man's development in every age and clime. The history of man's education is the history of the educational institutions of
is
That
family, church, state, school, society, science, art, literaof economics, fraternities, labor brotherhoods, tures,
MODEEmSM
;
29
every sphere where the aim is to promote unities and a higher way of living of every way that helps to socialize a race, races and the race. The most comprehensive and the most elusive of conceptions as to the relations between God and humanity is almost a It has a long that of the Kingdom of God.
world-long
found not only in the Jewish conception of it, but as an ideal in all religions and polithis life of the human race on tics, of what it all means earth and its ultimate goal. Jesus adopted the current Jewish ideal and adapted it An extreme school of critics holds that He to His ideal. did not adapt it, but that He accepted, was adapted to it,
history.
It is
enslaved by
it.
If
we thought
maintained by Schweitzer and Loisy and others; if we thought that Jesus essayed to be the Messiah of the Jews to bring to fruitage their conception of it and that He failed in his attempt at his last entrance into Jerusalem, a poor deluded religious and national zealot, then we should write no more, nor would there ever have been any church nistory to be read. It is true that He never gave any full and detailed account of this conception as adapted to His It is through a wonderful series of parables mission. that we must read it. His disciples never understood His conception. They have handed it down, clothed with their own preconceptions. ^'But it seems a perverse blindness to
;
what
palpably distinctive in the teaching of Jesus, to hold Him to have been possessed by the apocalyptic conceptions of the kingdom which ruled the mind of the people." ^ In St. John's Gospel we find that the conception of
is
eternal life is equated with and takes the place of that of the Kingdom of God, this latter being used but twice in this Gospel. The whole of Jesus' teaching shows this to
*
p. 20.
30
moder:n'ism
m eeligion
.-
'
'
s^'y'
^/v
Lave been His conception of his work and mission, rather than that of the Jewish conception of the Kingdom of God. The category used is biological rather than political. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Both St. Matthew and St. Mark preserve some of Jesus' biological conception, amidst their Hebraic clothes of Messianism, wherewith they marred His form. Either Jesus was a deluded zealot or His disciples misunderstood Him. "Verily I say unto you this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
They took
this literally, if they did not put it into If he uttered this did not take it literally,
He
the whole, the judgment of the church has been It has flourished only right in rejecting millenarianism. sporadically in small sects of zealots for the Jewish con-
Upon
add that the Jewish Messianic conceptions were later and far lower than that of the Jewish prophets. So spiritual were these generally that it is possible to see the conception of Jesus in them, in spirit and
in rudimentary fomi. "The Gospel in the Prophets," how much better Hebrew clothing to put upon Jesus, than the contemporary conceptions of the frenzied zealotry of a
political party.
No better work
is
vociferous exponents of Jesus, as the apocalyptic ^Messiah, the deluded Jew who perished in his zealous attempt to realize it. It is a brief for Jesus as greater than His biographers.
ful refutation of the
now somewhat
His Kingdom on earth. done on earth." Doing "Thy kingdom God's will in any sphere is promoting this Kingdom. It But it works outward as is inward as a vital principle. the leaven does. Jesus never succeeded in getting His conChrist's mission
to spread come, thy will be
was
MODEEOTSM
31
ception fully into the minds of His immediate disciples. Many of His parables they understood not. Christ's Kingdom is the Kingdom of the Father. Kingdom is used
as a conventional symbol. His thought is rather that of a family composed of those who gain a moral likeness
Father in heaven. It is a social order inclusive of all social orders on earth where the Father is loved and obeyed and when the brothers love each other even as He loved men. It was a sociological ideal. It was at hand.
to the It
was working in
till
their midst.
leaven
that
the whole
lump
we sometimes
life to exist
make
it
impossible for
His ideal. Everywhere, in family, church, state, the social and economic orders, in schools and workshops, in literature and science and art, in all societies and fraternities, wherever any
on
it.
two or three of any nation or religion are gathered together this kingdom of the Father is present just so far as all their doings are in accord with His will, as revealed in the spirit of the Master. To get and keep in this kingdom, and to spend one's life in service promoting it among one's fellows to seek chiefly this kingdom, this is the primal and central duty of all men. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God on earth. Who can doubt that Jesus put chief emphasis on this? When one reads the Gospels, he realizes how petty and selfish is the idea of personal salvation from
;
punishment hereafter. Yet for how many centuries such a salvation has usurped the rightful place in Jesus' thought of the kingdom. Surely a readjustment of emphasis is needed in this matter perhaps a restatement of belief as to salvation
Again how
false
and how
belittling of
His conception
32
of
it,
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
when
it is
The church
came into existence to further the far wider Kingdom. It It dares not seek self-aggrandizeis a means to that end. ment. But it has done this and it has suffered the penIt alty of being a poor means to such a grand purpose. has sought wealth and gotten it. It has sought earthly power and honor and glory and gotten them, but it has thereby always weakened itself as a promoter of the Kingdom. The Pope pointing to his heaps of money at the
Vatican, said to a poor friar, "If St. Peter were here now, " he would not need to say, ^Silver and gold have I none.'
The
friar replied,
to say 'arise
and walk'
The various other circles in the Kingdom have often done better work than the church. Why are so many good
She surely outside of her fold to-day? has no monopoly of the moral and spiritual life in the
Members
more of
broth-
erliness in their organizations than the church seems to offer them. Then as to others, a devout and learned pro-
disposed to think that a great and increasing portion of the moral worth of society lies outside the Christian church, separated from it
am
not by godlessness, but rather by exceptionally intense moral earnestness. Many, in fact, have left the church
in order to be Christians."
think of the modern conception of salvation, which has come from the modem study of the life and mission of the Master the conception that one is saved
just so
When we
spirit
and for
this,
do
we
not
know
that
men
MODEKOTSM
Christ's
3a
Kingdom
is
identical
wherever it is found. The philosopher and the scientist reading God's thoughts after Him and trying to follow in
these footprints the devoted mother, the loyal soldier and sailor; the faithful teacher and lawyer and doctor, the loyal to the ideal of the many vocations into which men
;
are called
all
Kingdom on
earth.
"A
Who
sweeps a room, as for Thy laws. Makes that and the action fine.''
The master passion of the Master of Christians was that of promoting the Kingdom of a heavenly Father on earth.
in so far as
so far as they
Sermon on the Mount making social life worth living. The gospel of the secular life is another name for it. The Bepuhlic of God
lead to a following the precepts of the
is
a good
His conception was a far wider one than that of any church organization, however catholic. The church grew naturally out of the association of disciples, when they began to propagate the gospel of this
not.
modem
Kingdom ?
34 Kingdom.
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
True, the churcli has often identified herself with that Kingdom. It is not worth while to refute such
an arrogant and groundless assumption. The most that can be said of it is that the church has had the function of
promoting the religious life of men; of their relations to God the Father through His son Jesus Christ. It is thus ministrant to the spiritual (a far wider term than religious) life of
men
is
The church
Gospels.
ministrant
She has had a wondrous history of mighty accomplishments. It would be easy to eulogize her for all her good works, and she justly deserves such eulogy. And this should justly accompany any indictments and harsh judgments, though fairly made against her. Without her,
purpose.
as the chief ministrant of the religious life, as ministering to the larger spiritual life of the race, life on earth would
be far
worth living today, as well as in centuries past. She has been an age-long institution for the welfare of the race. She has changed, grown too slowly with the progWhen a living church she has lived ress of the world. with her times; the purveyor of eternal life in the temporal life. In a tree, the real life from its roots is found The former layers form the in the present new layer. moribund stock which defies the storms and gives support The leaves and fruitage of past years to the new growth. Its annual fallen to the ground form soil for the roots. growths have increased its girth and solidity. The new
less
layer holding all these in its embrace, does the vital work That may serve as a picture of a of present growth. really living church.
logic of the
church through the ages. Many of the supposed impedimenta have really been encysted to give strength and expan-
MODEEmSM
sion,
36
the essential ones have been preserved in its growth from root upward polity, creed, cult and sacred
while
all
literature.
whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth^s sweet flowing breast;
tree
A A A
God
all
day.
And
tree that
may
in
summer wear
Who
Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.'' ^
Only God can make a living church and keep it living and growing. As I look out of my window, my eye rests u^on a stately, wide-spreading tree a Tulip Poplar that ^^lifts her leafy arms to pray" and stretches them out to give shade from torrid sun to cattle lying beneath it at mid-day. It was a large tree twenty-five years ago. But it had become hollow hearted. Children made a playhouse inside of it. One day it got on firetwithin. The lambent flames raged furiously, almost to its very top, and
we
out
*
looked for
its
parts.
The came
fire
purged
From poems by Joyce Kilmer, a young American made the supreme sacrifice in the late war.
who
36
MODERISriSM
i:^
EELIGIO:^^
living through cleansing fire. "The Church in the Furnace" is the title of a
written by seventeen English army chaplains in the recent war. It is a loud cry against the futility of their church
meet the needs of the Tommies in their hours of agony and in their hours of sheer daily drudgery. The church was speaking in theological language in a dialect not understood even by those who had been trained in her. The message of the book is like that of the old Hebrew
to
prophets. "Cry aloud." "Spare not." "O Jerusalem, wilt thou not be made clean ?" "Repent and return from your
to-day would profit by reading their lamentation over the use of outgrown forms; their
idols."
cry for better vernacular ones to meet the religious needs of men in this century; their loyal cry for the cleansing
fire
of the
Holy Ghost
let
to
boleths.
Better
the fire
bum
cadent parts. Life from the roots will flow all the better in the living present growth. The church has never been quite dead. Thank God for that. The church has never
been entirely lukewarm. The church has never quite ceased to appeal to the higher nature of man. And, though she has given too many theories about Jesus and His work, She she has never ceased to emphasize his supremacy. has been the church of Christ, however much she has
apostatized from His spirit at times. His Gospel for nineteen centuries.
She has kept alive Without her, we should be ignorant of that Gospel to-day. Whatever the forbidding forms in which she has sometimes presented it, she has preserved and points back to the historical
Jesus of the four Gospels. "The church's one foundation" has always been "Jesus Christ our Lord." When she harks back to Jesus of !N'aza-
MODEKNISM
retli
37
she gets and gives warm throbbing, winsome new life. The castle, the nautilus, the tree, the picture! How
it
That is historically with the church? too long a story for this place. When worked out through the nineteen centuries of her history, it shows all the limidoes
tations as well as all the vital truths of the pictures. Ever growing through and in spite of all limitations that is
work out
the true story of the church read with no pessimistic view of the ways of God in all history ; the justification of God
His way through all institutions that promote the welfare of mankind in the school of His kingdom on earth. The church as an organization for the propagation of the spirit of the Master of the disposition of heart and mind that will further the coming of His Kingdom on
in
earth, sanctifying all done in other spheres of man's secular life, has four aspects of Life, Polity, Doctrine a
Way
and Cult
CHAPTEE
POLITY
is
III
more than
the house.
tlie
house.
Yet
Jesus, through the ages and changes of the house, making the church the nurturing home of the religious needs of the race. In this institution we may distinguish four phases:
ciple.
to Jesus
Life, Polity, Doctrine and Cvlt, the latter three of worth Of these just so far as they are ministrant to the first.
of polity. Protestantism too much of doctrine, and both Rome and Protestantism in need of revision of cult Rome in the way
let
me
premise that
Rome
has too
much
of purgation and exclusion and Protestantism in the way the Life both have too of enrichment. But of the first
little.
And
life is
Christianity.
the essential, permanent element in Hence the perpetual need of going back to
Jesus, especially when we feel the strangling or smothering of this life in the relatively non-ministrant phases of In the primitive community polity, doctrine and cult.
All was inchoate. The polity and dogma were unborn. belief in the second coming of Christ in that generation, yielded them no need of polity and dogma. They were
waiting.
be allowed, that they had only a way of Whoever goes back to life, but not an ad interim Ethik. Jesus for His way of life, must go back to the four Gospels,
It
may
as these are
now
cism.
Whoever
seen by the aid of modem Biblical does this may rightly be esteemed a
38
criti-
mem-
POLITY
ber of some one of the
39
_
many
folds of
His one
flock,
and
should so be considered by the representatives of the offiJesus of the Gospels cial and doctrinal sides of that fold. and His way of life Jesus, Him first, Him last and Hi^. way of life, that is the root and heart of vital Christianity.
!
am disposed
It is the least vital of trative phase of the organization. the three. 'No one form is necessary to the being (esse) of the church, though different people may consider some
special
form
church.^
character of any form of polity cannot be proven by an appeal to the New Testament. The Master himself established none. His interest was the promo-
tion of the
Kingdom.
We
had no polity. He church. So did the early Jewish Christian communities. How little sympathy and how much antagonism He showed He would in his relation to "the rulers of the Jews!"
He
all
the evils
had begotten. After His ascension His band of disciples became a community, a party within the Jewish church. The glimpses that we get of that inchoate community, show us a body of men with a mission, organizing from time to time in ways best fitted to meet the present needs. Within a century Episcopacy seems to have become the regnant form.
From
that time
we
and a broader territory than any other form of church government. Of course mere length and breadth of Episcopacy does not prove it to be the only or best polity. But development justifies the three forms the Episcopal,
40
MODEEmSM
IN RELIGIO:^r
the Presbyterian, and the Congregational. Some form is always necessary, but it is by far the least excellent side of the church. It is not a part of the faith.
part of the institution, whatever form it takes, must be retained, but also restrained and kept from the assumption that it is the most vital part of the church.
i)olity
The
Identified, as it was in Home, with the clergy, such a state of affairs that it raised the cry ecrasez
'
it
led to
That was the state Eastern church, the religiously moribund orthodox church, had brought its people, that made the same cry, "crush the church," possible with Bolshevism. Simplify the machinGive the laymen more ery. Reduce its power and pomp.
the church.
voice therein.
crush
Then
two and in England. The annual convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1886 proposed the historic Episco-
as to the official church unity, we may refer to attempts made by the Episcopalians, in this country
pate, as the basis for unity of polity. Immediately the high churchman began to insist that the historic Episco-
pate could only mean the sacerdotal doctrine of the Apostolic succession and the jure divino theory of Episcopacy.
That
killed the
movement
Protestant churches.
fabrication.
the conception of a body of men as necessary channels of his Holy Spirit is the very opposite of His spirit and method. In the late Lambeth conference the high churchmen
And
again thwarted the wish of many bishops to present the Its proposal of historic Episcopate as a basis of reunion. it was so worded that the other churches saw that it meant
more than a
polity ; that it carried with it the idea of giving clergymen of other Protestant churches something essential ; something more than they could give in return.
POLITY
41
In a word the high church theory of Apostolic succession was implied in the Lambeth proposal. Since writing the
above,
November 26th has come to hand. Its editorial gives the same view of the matter. I am glad to give a quotation from it as it voices my sentiThe Churchman
for
have the deepest respect for those Nonconformist churchmen in England who refuse to be decoyed by any of the Lambeth proposals which cast a doubt upon
ments.
"We
Church unity is not precious enough to Christendom to be purchased by such a concession. Nothing must be done, say a minority, which shall imperil our efforts towards unity with Kome. Nothing must be done, say others, and The Churchman is of the number, which shall make impossible unity with other
the validity of their
orders.
own
Protestant Communions.'^
step toward official, often miscalled organic unity of the churches, is that of a Federation of the churches, not that of a swper official church. Rome would
first
The
way, and none could do it better. Borgia, Alexander VI would make its most potent head. Federation! Episcopalians may well be ashamed of the weak and non-committal attitude of their church in this matter in her last General Convention. Then intercommunion. But we blush at the Kikuya
show us only
this latter
In inviting members of the other churches to the Holy Communion, I sometimes remind our own people, that we should not do this as an act of condescension, as it would be, unless we were willing to Exchange accept a like invitation from their churches. of pulpits, intercommunion and the federation of churches,
incidents.
and Panama
are practical ways that should be used. What is the matter with the church ? Oh, say some good churchmen in the Protestant Episcopal church, it is the
lack of
evils
of divisions between
42
MODERmSM
IN KELIGION
Holy Catholic
the Anglican
the larger historical branches of the one Church The Roman, the Eastern and
But can we believe that, if this were achieved, many good people now outside would hasten to get inside ? Believe who may, we do not. At least it would all depend
branches.
upon a
No
spiritual revival being coincident with reunion. reunion of wilting branches would avail, if they were
not spiritually branches of the living vine; unless the spirit of the Master flowed more richly through them all. Suppose the dead church of Sardis and the lukewarm
iii)
made
a live and aggressive spiritual force in the world ? This reunion of Christendom, alas, is thought of too much
in the
unity.
way
scriptural text than that of Jesus' prayer "that they all may be one; as thou Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." Unity of spirit! That is the true, vital or-
Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesicu Oh, the inanity and the vanity of some of our Bishops and clergy in flirting with the eastern Holy Orthodox Church in their efforts for such a dead mechanical unity. For that church is, both in thought and sentiment, oceans and continents and ages apart from western Christianity. It stands for a petrified orthodoxy and a stagnant autocganic unity.
racy.
And how
painful,
the master diplomat. But when the spirit of fraternal relations with other Protestant churches moves in many hearts in the Episcopal
Roman church,
church,
toward manifesting this unity of spirit, are blocked by the extreme high church party. Take the members of the monastic Order of the Holy
all practical steps
POLITY
They have everything Roman
43
except
the
Pope
mass,
mariolatry celibacy of the clergy, the seven sacraments. Reunion with Rome is their fondest desire. Polity is a matter of the faith. Schism is the deadliest of sins. They
must see that the papacy was, and is, the historical normal and logical result of their conception of church polity. jNTursed in the Protestant Episcopal Church from puling infancy, this party has grown into domineering age and It has become almost intolerably intolerant of strength.
Protestantism in the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is hastening a crisis, when there will be schism from one side
or the other.
it is
We
cannot
But chiefly one of memory, of old traditions. also most active in its propagation of medievalism.
Surely the members of the Order of the Holy Cross are open to a very strong suspicion that they are Jesuits in
Sometimes disguise, in the service of the Roman church. we feel like saying: Oh, Rome! take in thy well grown
child, conceived
still
at
home
in a Protestant
church, and pray God, it may never be able to do as it wishes carry it all back to thy fold. would pay just tribute to the narrow type of holy
We
living of these fathers; tribute to their self-sacrificing work in stimulating the religious life in others and tribute If they would to their devotion to our common Master.
show their equal devotion in modem ways if they were not so insistent upon making their brethren adopt their medieval type if they were not such polemical propagandists if they were a bit more modest and tolerant of other views, we should be thankful to have them continue in our church, instead of going to their more congenial
only
let others
: ; ;
44
MODER^-iSM
i:^r
religio:n'
home
izing
believe in keeping our church as comprehensive as possible. But we do not believe in Romanit.
Rome.
We
Pardon another reference to the organization of the There is a movement to forward its Episcopal church. development on the hierarchical, rather than on its demo-
wants to have the presiding Bishop's residence in Washington and to have Archbishops and a centralization and multiplication of machinery. Rome led the way before, and a Pope was the natural and logical result. We want no more ecclesiastical titles and offices, An American but more simplification and spirituality. Bishop should not look forward to having a palace per* haps not even a cathedral, unless that exotic can be thoroughly modernized, as I think can be done. A fine cathedral inspires devotion in all who see it and in all who enter It it. It can be made a house of prayer for all people. can be made the center of learning and of pulpit eloCare should be taken not to use it for the selfquence. aggrandizement of any one church, nor for enhancing the external pomp surrounding an American Bishop, nor for weakening of the work of parishes and a semi-cathedralizing of their work in the diocese. Well may rich and poor
cratic side.
It
The
Episcopal Church! Yes, let us have it as a house of prayer and praise for all people. Rich men can do more towards saving their souls by contributing to its erection than in many other forms of ostentatious gifts. Eools they are if they do not in some way contribute largely to works benefi"Thou cent for the uplift of men ere they hear the words
national
cathedral
the
Protestant
fool, this
POLITY
But how much
better it
45
to
have a national cathedral for all souls of the many folds of His one flock a house of God that no one church could claim, or use
its
would be
for
olic
own aggrandizement.
fancy you say. Nay, but a realizable ideal. Morea super over, when there comes a federation of nations state, with its super Capitol there should come too a super Cathedral for people of all the religions on the face of the
earth.
The Pantheon
at
in
simplicity, might should be cleared of the tawdrily filled with exquisitely chiselled
its
Rome,
ornamented
statues
altars
and
prophets, who ing to the wisdom given unto them Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Mahomet and other prophets, along with the
of
the
The dangers of officialism and its machinery are known to need many words here. The genius
too well
of any
polity should be to rule for the benefit of those ruled. Too often this is perverted into that of ruling for the benefit
of the rulers.
offi-
It
comes to every form of officialism. It is found to-day in the Methodist church and in other churches besides that of Rome, though in a much less aggravated form. So we say, go slow with the official unity, the unity of polity.
Prepare the way by getting the sort of unity that Christ prayed for, the spiritual unity of Himself with the Father. Let this process go on through (St. John XVII, 21.) federation and fellowship and intercommunion till love reigns till Christ reigns within and then Polity may pass
;
46
MODEROTSM
11^
EELIGIOIST
in music, if not out of sight, into a less noxious, because a more ministrant, shepherding and a less ruling function.
Good Shepherd
the former
if
any
ganic unity of Christendom be shortly achieved the latter, if we all abide a wee in our own folds and labor therein for the spirit of the Master and for oneness with the
Father.
In
it
has been
"The women! God bless them! True that sometimes we don't get along very well with them, but then we could never get along at all, without them."
said of
women:
CHAPTEE IV
DOCTRINE
teaching. Every institution has its teaching side, in which it sets forth the object of its existence and its fundamental prin-
means
DOCTRIl!^E
ciples.
The teaching
side of
an institution
is
much more
of these
vital
It is only
official
when some
come dogmas. The largest part of church doctrine has no such official It may be the teaching of some great theoloauthority. gian, or the opinions of some parties in the church, or the general belief of a church at some given time. All such doctrine has only relative worth and authority, and so is
a great deal of restiveness under forms of both doctrines and dogmas. This is an anti-doctrinal and anti-dogmatic period in the life of the
changeable.
To-day there
is
church.
properly
ing.
The dogmatic
speaking, in the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan symbol, known as the Nicene creed. Eor the first three hundred years the church had no form of dogmatic teach-
What
Certainly the apostles did not formulate dogmas. became such was simply the teaching used in their
missionary work.
rent difficulties. the times.''
it
The
"They
Epistles were personal "tracts for taught according to the wisdom given
47
48
MODERIN-ISM IN RELIGION*
unto them." They had no I^ew Testament before them. They were without thought that what they wrote would later on be canonized as Sacred Scriptures. They had no prevision of Nice, or of the Reformation. St. Paul, that wonderful Christian mystic, teacher and church founder, thus began in his Epistles the teachings which eventuated in dogmas. His teachings were carried on and developed by Platonic thinkers in the church through the Nicene period, and then on and off, till St. Thomas turned the church from Plato to Aristotle, in the thirteenth century. There were parties in the primitive coramunities that St. Peter in his day, as threatened to tear it asunder. many more in this day, found in St. Paul's teachings "some things hard to be understood." He himself did not
speak in PauFs dialect, did not accept his dicta. He says, or some one said it for him, that St. Paul only wrote "acOn the other cording to the wisdom given unto him." hand St. Paul says of St. Peter "I withstood him to the
:
he was to be blamed." Barnabas was "carried away with the dissimulation of the Jewish party in this matter." In another dispute between Paul and Barnabas we read that "the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder, one from the other." But then there was no infallibly inspired New Testament to appeal to, as there is none now. There are more things in St. PauFs epistles, that modernists find hard to underOur general world-view is stand than St. Peter found.
face, because
But we also must teach "according to so very different. must go back, the wisdom given" unto us in this day.
We
not only through reformation and scholastic and patristic views but also through St. Paul and St. Peter to the Jesus
of the gospels for
eyes.
And
says
;
with our own modern woe be to that fold that says nay to the one
The
life,
and see
it
who
D0CTEI:OTE
"If Jesus Christ
is
49
And
That
only a
man
man
him
And
Modernists
to
him
be accused of over emphasizing the real humanity of Jesus. But that is as integral a part of the So high a churchman creed as that of his real divinity. as Bishop Gore, while deploring this, excuses it. Speaking of the theories (about Jesus) of the modernists, he concludes "What are we to do in the face of the modernist
may
movement
I will speak now of only one thing. It is a reaction for which the Catholic Church is largely responsible. Over long ages it obscured the full Gospel reality
?
of our Lord's humanity. It thus came about that very important elements of the truth about him were brought into
notice again from quarters more or less alien from the as by Shelley, or the author of "Ecce Catholic standpoint
Homo" or Dr. Glover. These recovered truths have fascinated men and reattracted them to Jesus but so far as to
;
make them
them.
evident again that all these elemust give ments of truth are part of our heritage. fresh and constant study to the Prophets and the Gospels.
it
We
must make
We
We
must authority is for different reasons ineffective. think out again what we believe and why we believe it, so as to be able to teach afresh, and in such a way as to
men's minds, and to win their hearts, the old truth about God and Christ and the Spirit. We have been giving too much attention in our preaching to subordinate
interest
We
points."
60
MODERNISM
m RELIGIOK
I will follow him, through heaven and hell. The earth the sea and the air/'
of the modernists in their emphasis on the reality of our Lord's humanity. They might even be accused of Jesuolatry. They have reached his divinthat
is
And
the
way
ity through his humanity. At a recent conference of modernists Dean Rashdall read a paper setting forth the wslj
the Divinity of our Lord seemed to him most likely to appeal to the present age. His Bishop was assailed with demands to "either prosecute the Dean of Carlisle, or
at once
his paper as heretical." The Bishop says: "I have read his paper carefully and can find nothing in it which amounts to the denial of any
condemn
So far from being a denial of the Divinity of our Lord, it is an attempt at once to explain and establish it." But of this more in a later
article of
the creed.
we must go through
tian centuries, learning and unlearning as we go, back to St. Paul. For better and for worse he began, what was
inevitable to thinking man, the use of the intellect on that which is primarily of the heart, in framing it all into
form or a dogmatic estimate of Jesus and His work and message and mission. A full consideration
intellectual
;
ought to be given to the world-view, the mental horizon and atmosphere, the environment in which The life came
to
Him.
Suffice
it
to say that
it
espe-
cially the
Jews of the
He
was a pharisee of the pharisees, but he was more; a citizen of the Greek city Tarsus. Judaism did not limit
from
its
transplanted the Jewish sect narrow intellectual outlook to the broader one
He
of Greece.
DOCTEINE
Logos.
in their
61
Him
own broader
dialect.
The following
is
me
why
why
it.
I wrote
it
statement of
with
so they had to think the question of the Person of Jesus out into speculative
thinkers.
And
They would never have reached the profound doctrine of the Holy
form.
this.
Trinity.
On Greek
soil the
forms of Docetism and Apollinarianism and ^N^estorianism till the (Ecumenical Council of Bishops, at Nicea A. D. 325, with the unbaptized Emperor Constantine holding the whip handle over it, in the interests of the state. Here was framed the first
Forged as
it
was
creed
in the fire of fierce controversy, as the heated manifesto of a numerical majority; disgraced, as most of
forged
to forge a Catholic
such councils were, with more tumult, violence and trickery than appears in any modem ecclesiastical or, perhaps,
any political council, it succeeded in doing the needed work for thought in framing a Catholic Creed. We can see a real development of doctrine through the whole Nicene period. This creed cannot be repeated understandcentral parts by any one not familiar with the terminology of all the Christological controversies. Eor
ingly in
it
its
most
to be used best in
councils of learned clergymen, but good to be said or sung on all high festivals of the church.
62
MODERisriSM
For a thinking man,
11^
eeligio:n'
Greek sense of philosophic I thinking, it deservedly stands on its intrinsic merits. have elsewhere given such appreciation of its worth that I need not further cumber these pages by giving reasons for my thankful acceptance of this form of sound doctrine, a veritable charter of comprehension and also of freedom. Its Christology and its doctrine of the Holy Trinity,
in the
are nearly ultimate for my thinking. I should accept it on its intrinsic merits even if
it
had
been framed by the provincial council of the General Assembly of Westminster Divines. I could do no better if I formed a council of one and essayed to work out a
doctrine of the person of Christ myself. The clause "who proceeded from the Father" had the addition made "and
in a later,
caused the schism of the whole Eastern (Greek) church. I think that the addition was correct and necessary. us note how it is a charter of freedom as regards any non-ecumenical dogmas. Supposing that we can accept the Nicene creed as Catholic dogma, how then
But
let
regard all other forms of doctrinal teachings of the church ? We may regard them all as relative. Take the Augustinian system; take reformation theology; take
shall
we
the socalled catholic theology; take !N^ew England orthodoxy w^e may say of every one of them they are merely
of relative authority.
several generations,
One should seek to understand how they came about and how they expressed the mind of their
and so give them due historical appreciation, and then put them in some theological museum for Suppose that one has not safe-keeping and inspection.
the time for such study suppose that a church puts any one of them before him for acceptance as authorita;
he to do ? Refuse assent say frankly that he does not believe them in the way demanded. That is what
tive,
is
;
what
DOCTKIKE
I should do.
63
to do.
That
is
They are not true Catholic dogma. The Nicene creed, that charter of comprehension of dogma is also a charter of freedom as regards all other forms of doctrine. They should not be allowed to worry the soul of one trying to be a Christian. They are open questions. Thus this creed says nothing about when or how
ought to have saved the church from giving grounds for such a wholesome and needed book as that of Dr. Andrew D. White's ^^History of the Warfare of Science with Theology." It says nothing about an infallible Bible. What theological warfares this might have saved us from! Nay even
created the world.
this
God
How
ment
the
Think
It says nothing about how Christ saves of some of the immoral theories of the atone-
earlier
one of
Christ
the devil, tricked by the human vine victim: or that of His being literally a proor to pitiatory offering to an offended Father (Anselm)
:
His
These were
all
attempts to rationalize how "God was in Christ, reconcilIn spite of these words ing the world unto Himself."
of St. Paul, he himself was first among those to try toexplain how. The creed says nothing about how we receive
grace sacramentally. Think of the Roman theory and also of the too one-sided subjective theory of Protestants. It says nothing of predestination and f oreordination. It says
nothing about ^'how the dead are raised up and with what body do they come." St. Paul changed from his view in his first Epistle to the Thessolonians (A. D. 59). In his first Epistle to the Corinthians he says "thou fool" to one holding his own earlier view. It says we believe in "the
world to come," but says nothing about the state of those departed. Think of the nightmare of horror
life of the
64
MODERNISM
IN"
EELIGI0:N'
cause bj both Romanist and Protestant pictures of bell from which it might have saved many terror-strickea
generations. This Catholic creed is a chapter of freedom on all these points. These conceptions are all dependent upon, and relative to, current world-views. As to the state
of the departed wicked, I recall an incident in a classroom of a theological seminary. The professor was ex-
pounding the orthodox view on this subject and decrying universalism. He mentioned the name of a clergyman holding this heretical view and added that he had been deposed from the ministry. Well, I exclaimed, then they would better depose me before I am ordained, for I hope
for the ultimate restoration of
all
Then
he explained that the clergyman had been deposed on the ground of immorality.
''0 yet
we
trust that
somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill. That not one life shall be destroyed Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God
This
is
a bit of nineteenth century optimism, somewhat chilled by the inhumanities in the great war. Pray for
the final redemption of those German military fiends ? Yes, I did pray for that, but for that accomplished
through eons of fiercest purgatorial fire that might purge out their brutal qualities by Him w^ho ^^always sits as a
refiner
and purifier of
it is
silver."
fair to say that many modernists do not esteem this creed in the same way. They are, I think, too prone
But
and approach the whole subject in an inductive and pragmatic way. Thus Dr. Edwin Hatch of the University of Oxford laments the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian doctrine. "The bequest of it has
to flaunt philosophy
DOCTEIlSrE
been a damnosa hereditas."
55
if it
"Even
be considered a
development of Christian doctrine, much of the Greek element may be abandoned." He does not have the speculative sense to appreciate it. But this is because he believes in Christianity as essentially a way of life. Cast off the emphasis on theology and return to the Sermon on the Mount, and Christianity may "stand out again before the world in the uncolored majesty of the Gospels." Here he is right. He makes the difference between the Sermon
.
creed, in
the fourth century the topic of his lectures.^ . . "Why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront
of the Christianity of the fourth century,
is
a problem
He blames
damnosa
heritas, in all
all
emphasis.
tianity as a
Dogma
way
of
is
life.
So many modernists are restive under catholic dogma, as well as under provincial forms of doctrine. They do not
have the speculative mind in their studies. The inductive and pragmatic methods appeal to them as strongly as the
speculative method did to the Greeks. not use these modern methods ?
Why
should they
Protestant modernists are free to look this dogmatic gifthorse in the mouth, and seek to attain the same results
by other methods. They believe in progress in doctrine, and are in earnest to contribute to a more vital, and intelligible form for their day.
A
r
new
one.
theology!
make
fatal?
1
No
No, they are not foolish enough to That is still much in the making. Is change change is bad for the old house. But no
56
change
is
MODERNISM
also
m RELIGION
Dogma, primarily,
plausible opinion. When communal, it gets offiBut it is still only opinion rather than cial sanction.
means a
Look a moment at the psychological steps knowledge. in the formation of dogmas. In childhood the religious mind is nourished on pictures, later on by pictureconceptions, then by abstract conceptions, dogmas, clearThen comes the critical stage, cut definit-e opinions. ending either in agnosticism or in a more just appreIn ciation of the place and worth of these dogmas.
the teens comes the necessary catechetical period for learning the doctrines of one's own church. Soon then comes
the iconoclastic, puppy-dog period of delight in tearing everything into pieces. The youth is quite sure that all
opinions, except his own, are foolish. not even the oldest. Later on he
the opinions of the youngest are be brought to see that all live things, nautilus-like, are in a process of development. He can read the history of dogma,
at least, in the historical spirit. means sterility. He gives up his
He
dream of
in the changing order. may be a bit impatient with the older parts of his castle. To present static forms, he may say, You change not, therelives
He
He
fore you are dead, just as an old stand-patter may say. You change, therefore you are not true. Ultimately, as he
and living institutions, he may accept his heritage with some modern improvements. He may become a stand-patter himself and romanticize into the old. Then he is not a modernist. But dogma of some kind he must have, even if it be that
comes
to
know
the nature of
all life
of his
own making even if it be only that of the ostracized agnostic, "I don't know and nobody else does," logically ending with a doubtful doubt about his own doubt. This
;
DOCTEOTE
67
he scarcely ever reaches, but houses himself in his own dogmatic doubt. Dogma one must have to live. Dogma is one of the necessary products of life. Life
begets
its intellectual
very stronger than the radical element in all institutions, that they may do their best work; cultivate the soil best. Intellectual nomads cultivate no soil. It has been said that it is better for a state to abide with many bad laws, rather than to be forever changing. There is partial truth in this. Change must and does come. But it should come slowly to meet the needs of changing times. First the old, then the new in and with the old. That is the way with the English Common Law, a more natural one, perchance, than that of the American Constitution with its increasing number of amendments. This is not quite as radical
naturally
as the darning an old stocking till the old part is gone, and a wholly new one is left. In English Law, if a court
gives an
adverse decision for the plaintiff, an appeal can be taken to show that it is not in accordance with
justice.
fundamental right or
its
If this
is
sustained before
its decision.
Thus
progresses. Equity, which Aristotle defined as a higher kind of justice, prevails over any legal form of justice. It applies ^^the leaden rule that is used
Common Law
in Lesbian architecture," ^ not a rigid but a flexible one, adapting itself to the unevenness of the shape of the
stones.
But
the church
is
state.
Be-
sides the religious emotions cling to sacrosanct phrases and dogmas. Continual change of, or tinkering at, these static
forms shakes and loosens the tendrils of the clinging vine weakens the faith in and the love and loyalty to the mother.
;
XIV, and
his "Rhetoric"
1.
XIII.
68
Yes,
MODEROTSM IN
say, dogmas, as
RELIGIOiN'
keep the form of these sacrosanct phrases and we do an old pair of shoes. They are so comfortable. To go slow here is the wisdom of conservatism. The leaven is still working in what sometimes seems to be putrid dough. The mood of progress is at least unpleasant to stand-patters. For it points out all the uncouthness and deficiencies, all the faults, follies and crimes of the old. Its eye scans a wider horizon. It sees possible new forms for life in the present, compared with which the forms of the old seem decayed and withered. It can say
many
the old shibboleths with difficulty. Perforce it pours its new wine into the dry old skins to the bursting point and longs for that point to be reached. "Let the dead bury the
Perish the dead forms of a law-encrusted gospel. Forward with it in forms best fitted to meet the needs of
dead."
Both conservative and radical are wrong. The conservative says, God was, and God worked in some places in the past. The radical says, God is here and now; present and working as really as He was then and there.
this generation.
cunning of reason, the way of God in history, can abide quietly in the old, while working for the new. Genuine conservatism must have some of the mood of progress, for it knows that no living institution can keep living except by the rejuvenation that comes
see the
from meeting the changes of environment; by responding to the dominant ideas of new periods which give the dialect and framework for its experience, religious or otherwise, The wise rade.g., the dominant idea to-day, of progress. ical, must in turn, be the heir of all the ages, must believe
that "through all the ages one increasing purjxDse runs." But when the crisis comes; when a great historic turn-
the sorrows of travail come, then, as history shows, a Luther rather than a genuinely conser-
when
DOCTEIlSrE
vative Erasmus, is needed, to build the
sion.
69
more
stately
man-
There have been many systems of theology in past ages that were new in their day new at least in very many of their points. Sometimes Sometimes older views were molded into broader forms. quite new views were introduced, but always in connection with and with reference to older views. These have generally been the work of individuals of great intellectual power, men like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Arminius and, in this country, Jonathan Edwards and the other 'New
?
England orthodox theologians Bellamy, Shedd, Hopkins, Taylor, Bushnell, Einney, and Parks, till orthodoxy collapsed about A. D. 1880. Since that time the new school of theologians in Congregationalism has flourished on the
This process was much aided by the intellectual Unitarians. Doubtless the old orthodoxy looked on it as the advocalus diaboli. But it did a good and a needed work. To-day we find among clergy and laity
ruins of the old.
many who
are really tri-theists instead of being ^N'icene Trinitarians the Latin term persona being an unfortu-
nate and very imperfect and misleading translation of the Greek term used in the creed virocrTaais.
All this
But
too academical for the purpose of this book. for the trained theologians the New theology must go
is
on within the
lus-like theology. The new wine old bottles as Jesus poured His
must be poured
into the
new
Judaism
till
second Augustine, Aquinas or Calvin, has not yet appeared in the church. But for the great majority the new work must go on through and out of current provincial
dogmas.
The cry
60
MODEROTSM
11^
KELIGIOlSr
Modernists cannot bring themselves into harmony with the old, which speaks to them in dialects relatively obsolete. Time and thought will ultimately do the work. Dust will settle has already settled over the tomes of old dogmatic
theories.
in the
The age is seething and bubbling, nay boiling, new work, with non-conforming thought and con-
This work must be largely critical and largely radical and not an agreeable one. The constructive work also goes on. I^ew But the conceptions are being formed and proclaimed. work is withstood by the ultra-conservative element in most churches, chiefly in the ranks of their clergy, and comes up against what has been characterized as the clerical mind.
science, within, as well as without the church.
Then clergy are naturally conservative of the old. they have vested interests in it. First it was Bishops in General Councils, since then it
The
has been the clergy in provincial councils, and sometimes in councils of the lone self, that have been dogma makers.
monocular, biased and partisan. It needs to be supplemented more with the mind and the wider vison of the laity, if progress is to be made. The clerical mind, I let it go with a quotation: "By clericalism," says Canon Freemantle,^ "I understand the system which unduly exalts the clerical office, and the function of
clerical
is
But the
mind
draw away the sense of divine agency and appointment from other offices and other funcpublic worship, so as to
tions.
This tendency
church.
not really one that exalts the It exalts the clergy alone; it dwarfs and emascuis
voice.
serious, earnest, wistful desire, too often repressed in their loyal conformity, for a new dialect in doctrinal conceptions.
The hope
of the church
is
with the
p. 364.
DOCTKIKE
61
nurtured in the new learning. Through them largely the constructive process goes on and a new dialect is being formed. The new learning brings forth new metaphors,
It sees the old faith in new light, reconceptions. ceives it in harmony with the changed conditions of modern science and culture. Only on her own peril can the
new
church excommunicate herself from the larger life and learning and vision of modernists. The most deadening of
all
heresies is that
which
mind, or even to that of good minds in ages past. We have found the bones of the giants of old, and found them to be no larger than our own. Let us dare to work in their spirit. Many of them are found to be an inspiration, but let none of their conceptions weigh on us as an incubus. Their duty is our duty. See as best we can with our modern eyes, as they saw with their then modem eyes. Woe is me and woe to the church, if the Christianity of Christ be not larger and richer than any of its formulations. Dare to form new ones, temporary but vital for the needs of the new age. Let the process of change go on. Let the church be at least patient with the pioneers. But she must be more. She must be the church learning (ecclesia discens) if she would be the church teaching (ecclesia docens) to this age in the matter of Christian conceptions. She must integrate all the new learning with the old and sometimes supplant the old with the new, if she would be an inspiring teacher of those who have, pedagogically,
clerical
passed beyond the catechetical period, out of the sunday school into the church. And her Sunday schools should be primarily for teaching the simple Gospel story, and then
for the dogmatic teachings of the church.
Let modernists go on freely forming new conceptions, and frankly giving them utterance. They may thus help to create a modern atmosphere around those who are either
62
MODERisriSM
m religio:n"
We
are none of us infal-
The danger of loyally or lazily conforming to the old. modernists is that of premature dogmatism, of puppyism not yet come
lible,
to maturity.
not even the youngest. But infallibility is never in order in this sphere of relativity. What is best relative to our own times and needs is all that can be urged here. Let
men remember that the over emphasis of dogma the bane of Rome and of Geneva, and beware of
has been
like dog-
matic over emphasis themselves. Let them, too, be patient and not lightly hurt devout souls, for of such is the kingdom of God. Let them take more time for the study of old forms that they may have a truly historical and religious appreciation of them ; of ages in which they were formed
what they meant for the and of how they met the
one of the
intel-
Lack of
this is also
They fail to read the way of God in the history of the mind making dogmas. They see only a scene strewn with dead forms. Dogmas are never dead bom. The old ones were as vital in their days as new ones are now. God is in history as well as in the present. Either that or there is no God. If so, all
sins of modernists.
and religious
thinking is a delusion it may all be of the devil and thought be his tool. Much of the crudity and incompleteness in traditional forms
is
made more
tolerable
when
them in their historical environment. Many minds remain geocentric. Many heliocentric minds are often geocentric in their dialects. "The sun (our sun) do rise." All others have set. "The sun rises and sets," "yours truly," and other polite terms, the modernist must often use when conforming to some outworn forms in public worship. Thus the Augustinian theology
one
tries to see
implied in the opening exhortation of the office of Baptism of children may choke in the mouth of the minister, as he repeats it. He would sooner omit it and pass at once to
DOCTEINE
the sweet words of Jesus in
tlie
63
Other
outgrown words in the public services, he knows that the mind of the church herself has encysted or that she takes
salts.
Communion
office.
Take the word satisfaction in the That is a definite term in St. AnseWs
theory of the atonement as a satisfaction to the divine It is only encysted in It ought to be dropped. honor.
It is a post-Nicene and prothe thought of the church. modem conception. Or take the word propitiation in a The sense in which it was verse quoted from St. John.
meant
by those who put it into the Communion service was wholly the pagan idea of propitiating an angry His God was St. John knew no such a Deity. Deity. Love and Light. Better drop that verse from St. John's
to be taken
Epistle of love than to keep it as conveying the pagan notion of propitiating an offended Deity.
for the creeds, I deprecate any mutilation or reediting them on many grounds, as I would deprecate the
total
As
remodeling of a fine old castle into a modem palace. They are works of religious art, and should be preserved
intact.
Keep them
Put
them in the background when you come to the office of admitting new members. Here we may plead for a simpler
one.
many
adults
whom we
should
fain gladly receive and who would gladly enter if a simpler creed should be demanded for their acceptance. Let me suggest one tentatively, such as I should like to use in
presenting adults for confirmation I believe in the Father of all; and in Jesus the revealer of
God and
;
I believe in the
life-giving spirit
eternal.
in the fellowship of the children of God ; in the forgiveness of sins, the victory of love, and the life
Amen.
CHAPTEE Y
A PEESONAI.
CONFESSIOI?r
AFTERworth
tive
life?
writing the preceding chapter on Doctrine, I find myself asking after all, what is the compara:
of doctrine in nurturing the Christian I think that I can best answer this from personal
As
to traditional orthodoxy, I
me.
In college the usual skeptical spirit possessed In the seminary I had to fight my way back into
I succeeded. orthodoxy, almost through bloody sweat. In my academical life philosophy took me to its deepest foundations, and I became a Nicene theologian. In later
religious experience and work it all seemed to fall away not disbelieved but seemingly irrelevant, so that orthodoxy passed in music out of sight. I still hold the Nicene
Christology intellectually. But I have no use for it to cultivate the religious life in myself or in others. I find like other modernists, that the inductive and pragmatic meth-
ods yield
more
ter.
better spiritual food and also appeal much directly and fruitfully in leading others to the Mas-
me
Doctrines about
this matter.
are not very greatly ministrant in Personally I regret, in later life, the time
Him
and wrestlings I gave to theories about Jesus. because I had been bred to think that right
essential to salvation.
If I
am now
asked whether
trines quicken worship spiritual pulse and enhance and work, I am compelled to say that they do not. So I decline to put the old emphasis upon creeds and doctrines
my
my
64
PEKSOISrAL COISTFESSION
65
when trying to turn souls from themselves to Jesus and His way of life; to reconcile them to God through Jesus
and to incline them to practical working for His Kingin all the spheres of life. I only endeavor to get the little circle over which my influence extends to try to fol-
dom
low His footsteps and in His way of life. I sometimes wonder that people who are not thoroughly educated put so much emphasis on doctrine. This is largely due to the over emphasis put upon orthodoxy by the church and clergy.
This produces bigoted
fellowship.
zealots.
It
is
divisive of Christian
reads of the f anatacism, the hatreds, persecutions, and wars that have been its unchristian fruitage in many ages of the church. To-day, however, doctrines do not appeal enough to men to fight about. Time and experi-
One
men
the disputations and doubts they cause. Let us try to get back to Jesus of the Gospels, and Let us have something to live as He would have us live.
influence in shaping our lives than have traditional doctrines about Him. Of course men can-
more
through the nineteen centuries of Christological speculation. But it is fatal to both life and thought if we tarry in any one of them, unless we go back to Jesus and then think That will give us afresh, through them all, about Jesus. Back to Jesus for life and forward with vital doctrines.
Him
to doctrines about
Him:
at least freshen
up
the old
doctrines and perhaps aid in forming a new theology. For forms of doctrine let bigots fight. The Christian cannot be wrong who is following in His most blessed footsteps,
6Q
MODERmSM
new
m KELIGION
rightly ask
how I
in the old in
my
try to sketch my way Talking with honest skeptics, I always try to appreciate their difficulties, of which I ask for a frank statement.
Let
me
Often with cultured people this leads into philosophy. The fundamental question here is that of idealism as against materialism or, say, against the mechanical scientific conception of the universe and the resulting religious agso thoroughly a trained philosophical idealist, that I find little trouble in vindicating it. But then comes their doubt about the doctrines of the church.
nosticism.
Here
am
Here
swallowing them.
Then
modem
and Bible
them of difficulties arising wholly from Then the modern view of orthodoxy, so
that questions as to total depravity, theories of the atonement, and the state of the departed need not trouble
them. I try to give the historical view of the origin of all such provincial theological doctrines which the men of past generations, seeing through their then modem eyes framed, many of them now obnoxious. Finally
I try to lead them back to Jesus of the Gospels, as seen through the work of modern Biblical criticism, showing
criticism is always constructive. Through all the ecclesiastical and theological pictures of the Master
I say, go back to the Master Himself, as living and teaching and working in Judea; back to Jesus and see Him
re-achieving the Divinity
tion
;
He
real incarna-
and to the salvation for men which He sought and for which His life and death sacrifice were so freely given. Recognize that His idea of salvation was that of getting His mind and spirit into the hearts of
back to
Him
A PEESOl^AL
COJSTFESSIOI^
67
men, that they also might labor better for His one chief the advancing of the Kingdom of God on earth. mission, Study the Gospel portrait of Him first and chiefly. Then I ask, can you not take Him as your loving friend, teacher, master, leading you to a higher life? Will you say that of all mankind you will cleave to Him always? Will you dedicate your life to His service? Then what doth hinder? Arise and be baptized. Enter the church and use all her means for further edification in life and doctrine. And no church should ask more for the admission of new disciples. Jesus asked even less. Let her trust *^ that one who can only say Jesus most divine, when most human thou art" is at least on his way to a fuller concept tion of his Divinity. Trust him in his stage of Jesusolatry. Let him get love and loyalty to Jesus and he is on
his
way
Again, you may rightly ask how I preach to my own flock what message do I give it ? When after thirty years of academical life and after
real evangelical sort of conversion, I re-entered the active work of the ministry, I took this text : "Let this
new and
mind be
ii:5.
in you, which was also in Jesus Christ." Phil. And that has been the burden of my message ever
since.
motiving all our conduct of soul, here or hereafter. We are saved just so far as we are thus saved by Him. And we have so little of His We need more of the spirit of the Evanspirit now.
spirit
passionate, constraining love of the Master, begotten in us by His passionate love for us. Back with them to Jesus for our religion. Ofttimes
gelical
party
the
the Evangelicals went back chiefly to His Apostles for doctrine. Let us live more with His Gospels; study
68
witli
MODERNISM
the
i:^
RELIGI0:N'
scholastic
Evangelicals
their
to
their
schemes
of
doctrine;
intellectual
^^plans
of
salvation'^
and
formulas and party shibboleths. Loosen the bands they put around the Bible. Cast off their doctrine of the plenary inspiration of every word and letter in all parts of it. Take the Bible as we now know it to
straight- jacket
be, as containing the
word of God
as received
by men of
other ages, under the historical limitations of their times and education and their general and differing world-views.
Take
tians.
it
as
we now know
it
as containing much that is not religious literature with much that is pure folklore and exaggerated tribal history or legend. The old doc-
is
not true.
We
our children; to teach or imply it in teaching them in our Sunday schools. We should allow them to read only parts of the Old Testament and those always with Then their Anselmic theory of intelligent interpretation. the atonement; of sin and salvation, of heaven and hell,
teach
it
to
will surely be obsolete. As to the life of the departed, I have preached as follows : But how best conceive of the plus ultra the more
what heaven means ? Men are forever making pictures of that which is unpicturable because it is super-picturable, "beyond compare" with And then, as they grow in things of time and space. knowledge and spiritual life, they are forever casting away That is good and proper as long as it the old pictures. does not also cast away the faith in that for which their That for which these always stand is old pictures stood. the the Kingdom; the family of God for His children plu^ ultra of death. If you were to ask for the most genbeyond
?
How
best realize
eric belief about the character of the future life for sons of
A PEESOJ^AL
CO:tTrESSIO]^
69
men, I should answer that it is the same that I have for the end and purpose of this life; and that is the further education and discipline of the sons of men into the image of the Master into sons of God. Dante pictures in local coloring, the various grades in
for the purging out of sin and nine grades in the Paradizo for further education and refinement. Through all these
Divine Pedagogue is drawing His children into mystic union with Himself in the tenth circle the highest heaven. Education! That is the essential meaning
circles the
of the doctrine of the intermediate state of the departed. And the intermediate state, the intermediate school, that
the highest that the vast majority of us will be fitted to enter, so slow has been our progress in His school here
is
below.
just as
verse,
Our death day will usher us into the new world, we are. But it will still be in the Father's uniif
not somewhere, in His larger universe of ^all things visible and invisible." We shall enter it with the same characters with which we leave this school, with
somehow,
something far more rich and personal than Karma. We shall need further education and further remedial punishment, or purging. Why not give this intermediate state the name of Purgatory ? It has bad and repulsive associa-
That we must admit. But it is a good term. It is a state for refining and purifying. Few of us shall be fitted to enter heaven few are the saints, the pure in heart who shall see God. That will take a long course of education and purgation for the most of us.
tions.
;
Again,
we
a social
Our characters here relations. So we think that that The apostle speaks of the state.
When
last
70
earth
MODEROTSM
He
said
:
IN"
KELIGIOIST
"Let not your hearts be troubled. ... In my Father's house are many mansions" that is many homes. The same holy, social bonds that unite men here
the tender ties that constitute a family here; the friendships, and the schooling together in all social circles, will
higher and nobler forms. How empty and cheerless heaven would seem without the personal presence there of our elder brother Jesus Christ, and without the welcoming presence of our dear
doubtless continue
there
in
departed relatives and friends and brothers. Without this social element, and reunion with friends, heaven would
never seem attractive enough to ever
for
it.
make us homesick
the story of the heathen Goth who came to a missionary to be baptized that he might go to heaven. He asked the missionary where his ancestors and where his
You know
dead children were. As baptism was held to be necessary to salvation, he was told that they were in hell. Then, said the noble Goth, I won't be baptized. When I die, I want to go where they are. But in my Father's house there are many mansions,
homes, many schools. Between a pious mother and a wicked son in the same house here on earth there is often an impassable gulf, at least for the son. The mother's love makes the pass. Good scholars and unruly bad ones may be in the same schoolroom there as here. Again, to continue an annual theme on All Souls' day in All Souls' Church, can we pray for the departed ? If we have prayed for them here how can
many
we
them there? The vivid sense that had of the communion of saints
the belief that the dead like the living, were still living members of Christ's Church made it impossible for them
A
to
PEESo:NrAL co]^rEssio:N'
71
pray for the one without also praying for the other. Here is an old epitaph
:
Here
lies
Hae mercy on his soul, Lord God, As I wad do, were I Lord God, And Thou wert David Elginbrod/'
That expresses a genuinely human cry of the soul. Have mercy on my soul, here and hereafter. Have mercy on the souls of my departed loved ones, as I would were I Lord
God.
the Lord."
All souls are God's here and hereafter, now and forever whether home-staying sons, or prodigal sons to he drawn back into the Father's house. That is the eternal
To
all
the
inconceiv-
^^Thou wilt not leave us in the dust Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die And thou hast made him Thou art just.''
:
:
:
shine upon them and give them peace and joy and rest and further discipline and service in Thy kingdom beyond, through our
may
elder
brother,
Amen.
I don't preach
is
many
doctrinal sermons.
When
72
moder:n'ism in eeligio:n"
Logos in the infant Jesus who "increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." Then through Lent, how "he learned obedience by the things which he suffered" (Heb. v:8). How he was,
real incarnation of the
in all points, "tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. iv:15). How He suffered agony in Gethsemane;
how He made
He
reachieved divinity (Phil. ii:9) through all his service of love for us loveless men; how He rose again and
opened the gate of everlasting life for us on Easter; how He completed the return process of excamation at the Ascension.
any provincial theology, though imbedded in some of our services why not treat it as we treat the Fourth
to
As
Commandment. Though clad in Hebrew clothes, we mentally say we mean the Lord's Day, before we ask God
to "incline
it
our hearts to keep this law." I try sometimes to explain the outgrown form try to fill with the new meaning. Often I say of some heterodox
;
it
by
if it
worries you.
:
Then
assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is" (Heb. x:25), or more now than then. Come to the church. You need a sabbath for your soul. Enter and try
to feel that
"The Lord
is
in
let all
the
earth keep silence before Him." Join in the services of uplift from the world. Frequent the Lord's Table. Invite His
presence, and He enters as Host. And do not forget, before partaking of the most holy food, to join in heart with the minister as he says: "And here we offer and present
unto Thee,
and living sacrifice unto Thee," that so we may be "made one body with Him, that He may dwell in us, and we in Him." So too in Baptism, "remembering alreasonable, holy
A PEESOJ^AL
COlSTFESSIOlSr
73
ways that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession; which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ and to be made like unto Him that as He died and rose again for us, so should we who are baptized die from sin and
;
rise again unto righteousness, continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all
virtue and godliness of living." Finally come to our week-day service of silence
hurly-burly of our modem over-strenuous activity for meat and drink, for money and pleasure. ^^Be still and know God." Then I urge a return
good old way of living much with the Bible. Give much time to the devout study of the Gospels. See Jesus of Judea till you love Him as teacher and master and
to the
all
ways
that so the peace of God, which passeth all human understanding, may come and abide with you in all the battle
and burden of
life.
Something
sage of a modernist in the pulpit. Truth comes to us in earthen vessels, in codes, creeds,
cults
and
institutions.
to
be dropping
out of
many
of
them
to-day.
found forms in the past, when the old forms to be obsolete. It is the general spirit of our modern age that is knocking the bottom out of many good old forms. And what are we doing to meet this con-
many
You, very nonchalantly, dismiss the claims of reason, Bible and church, from their seats ^knock the bottom out of them of infallible authorities, If not, what do you give all. Is not this agnosticism? as their unbreakable bottom and so, their authority ? This fair question may be answered in this way.
dition of
many minds?
mind back
either to a
74
MODEROTSM IN
EELIGIO:^'
or a supreme unreason. I know that it carries back to the former as the First Principle to a Personal Reason God. There are many other ways in
Supreme Reason
which men attain to some belief in some sort of a God. The kinship of God and man is a fundamental fact part of man's nature. So man is by nature a religious being. In the mystic depths of his consciousness there lies, often overlaid and smothered by other interests, the instinct to worship. It depends not upon intellectual proof. That at best gives form to his feeling of God. And that is fun-
damental.
Starting with the speculative attainment what has reason, a God-given faculty to do, but to trace God's footnot only in the laws of nature the laws of the immanent divine but also in the history of mankind, especially in that of all educative institutions through
steps,
which the process of the progress of the race has gone on ? How have these institutions served their function of promoting the welfare of the race ? First, how has any one of them say the church done this in ages past and then how is it doing this now ? Its authority rests on our answer to that. The vital faith once delivered in Judea has been
given afresh time after time. Can we not trace a continuity rather than an identity in these various forms ? Why seek
for identity. Life grows.
Nothing living
is
its past.
''The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And God fulfils himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'*
It is possible to trace continuity
process.
The
A
So
too,
PEESOJSTAL CO:t^rESSIOIT
75
perish
ceasing
to
fulfil
their
rot.
functions.
An
in-
stitution
may
rise, ripen,
and
church, and state have always had cover even from a state that seems like rottenness.
are jure divino.
But
They
chang-
They minister
ing forms. Is not that sufficient ? The wise man accepts the whole historic process of an institution in the historical spirit and in the spirit of
the Fifth
labor to
Commandment. But at the same time he will make that institution function for present needs
fully as well as it did for those of other times and conditions. He will be an enlightened modernist. This is the way people treat their political institutions ; the wise way
the English people treat their Common Law, full as it is, of obsolete customs, anachronisms and defects. It is the
wise
way
church
are
How
we
that of a blind, purposeless physical evolution, possible and that of the progressive revelation of God made to man,
as he discovers
Two
interpretations are
His
footprints.
This
is
a question for
"A
fire
and a cell, A jelly fish and a saurian, And caves where cave men dwell Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod,
crystal
Some
call it
And
76
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
"A man's
a
man
for
a'
that''
a man
in spite of his
His upward look has made it an ascent. He traces his true descent from God. He is being made after His image and likeness, through the education and training of His institutions. Any institution is what
descent from a beast
it
has become.
Its authority at
any time
is
that of minis-
trant service.
tion
and the denial of its past. It forbids any uncritical acceptance of past forms of life as final and authoritative, as well as the undue glorification of the present stage of the
institution.
Every
laden with the past. But the golden age is in the future, not in the past, or presents The Gospel transcends the law fulfils it. But truth is not given like a shot out of a pistol. It is done into man through moralizfuture as
it is
ing institutions. The Ten Commandments had been thus worked into the social experience of men before they were given out on Mount Sinai. Thus the Lord had said for
ages.
them
for the good of mankind. That gave their authority. Most modernists are wise enough to
They were
accept an institution laden with its past. Some are otherwise. But such are really belated denizens of the "vulgar
rationalism of the Eighteenth Century." Then reason, Bible, and church were conceived of in static form. Then
development of institutions.
cized.
The hisCriticism was decidedly destructive. torical method frees one from such iconoclasm. It restores
appreciation and authority to human institutions in spite of their patent defects. It is this spirit that appreciates the whole history of the church, and of the Bible and gives
them their proper authority. "Thus saith the Lord," has been continuous with
devel-
PEESOISTAL COISTFESSIO:^
Y7
oping forms, as
able to discover
more and
further can a modernist say on fundamental Christian conceptions? Let me mention briefly a few of
What
That was the the points. God "What is God like form of the question blurted out by a wounded officer to whom an army chaplain was ministering a cry from the
!
CHAPTER VI
WHAT
!
IS
GOD LIKE ?
GOD
We
Back of the names wherewith men of all religions have named Him, there has been the feeling of the unnamable One. name God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But
dares
is
Who
name Him ?
is
only the
way
we know Him
the
way we have
discovered
Him
through
His revelation of Himself to us. We cannot say that this exhausts the fullness of His being. Philosophy has worked on this question and answered, in Eastern speculation, the One is the impersonal, unnamable substance of all things, giving an impersonal pantheism. In Western speculation,
has answered. He is the personal Subject, the transcendant eternal Thought or Self-consciousness, in whose very nature lies the self-necessitated motive to continuous
it
consciousness, preparing the way for the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and (2) a doctrine of the divine
immanence.
cal
But the Absolute of philosophy is not identiwith the God of religion. Religion is quite secondarily
It reaches
intellectual.
ways.
The
by
religious ways of knowing God can be vindicated a theory of religious knowledge as valid as that of the
speculative way. But this is beyond our present purpose. What is God like? asks the religious mind. What mental
Him ? Some
78
sort of
knowledge
is
WHAT
IS
GOD LIKE?
79
This is folimplicit in the simplest religious experience. lowed through a long course of experience till knowledge
transcended in the mystical vision of the pure in heart and in mystical union with Him. But the religious mind cannot live without trying to form an answer to the ques^^What is God like ?" Generally it works, like other tion
is
:
Let it be granted ceptions, whence proceed its dogmas. that this sort of knowledge is inadequate to the rich experience of
God
and more
vital
ways
to
Take the
God
man
to
Grant,
then, that man's thought about God is conditioned by his stage of culture at any given time, and we can trace a growth in the spirituality and intellectuality of the conLet us grant that ception of God in all vital religions.
the religious mind is naturally anthropomorphic, not forThen we getting the theomorphic side of man's nature.
may
say that an honest, just, merciful. Fatherly God, is the noblest work of thinking man. The second commandment forbids the making of any graven image or likeness of God. But mental images the
religious
Anthropo-
morphic conceptions always contain a si^per-anthropomorphic element. Even the graven image of the idolater is
always more than the image. It contains a super-iraage worth for him. Again, along with the mental process of
making God in the likeness of man, there goes the process of making Him out of the likeness of man; the process
,
But
80
MODERmsM
m religio:n'
changed conditions of modem culture a convenient term for housing the results of mind's conquests in the last cenThe history of many other religions may be best tury. studied in the light of a gradual purification and elevation of their conceptions of God. So may that of Christianity. It has been going on through the Christian centuries. And we may trace the same process in our own religious conceptions.
That depends upon who we are, and at what period of life and culture we are, at the time of uttering it. Here we may notice the dialectic at work
is
What
God
like?
home. We begin at the conceptions of God held by the most superstitious heathen and follow along through the higher forms of the world-religions, criticizing and
at
refusing to accept any of their conceptions of God as adequate or worthy. We continue the examination of the
Christian conception of
God
and
We criti-
God
that
many
ing our
itself in
own conceptions. From the mother's knee to the dying couch we are transforming or replacing imperfect conceptions about God by more worthy ones. We acknowledge
that our highest conception only faintly adumbrates and suggests the inexpressible Infinite and Absolute.
same holy spirit in us, urging on to a wider vision, up loftier mounts and into deeper communion. It is the same spirit co-working with our spirit, as we realize the imperfection of our attainment and
it is
the
expression of spiritual knowledge. Iconoclastic criticism of outworn conceptions is a perfectly normal activity. So, too, is the further work of replacing them by new ones
that are
WHAT
of
tiiouglit.
IS
and
GOD LIKE?
81
Fairy
tale
Dogmatic teaching of history transforms them. Poetry and works of the higher imagination carry these outgrown conceptions into higher and
ceptions of history at
first.
wider vision.
The
and
sky,
transformed and widened by the study of the exact sciences. Again, mechanical conceptions employed in these sciences are seen to he as mythological as those of religions, as "the fantastic exaggerations of an incomplete perception"
as the idols of a groundless metaphysic, useful but not final (Comte). It is all a matter of psychology.
(Mach) or
I was a child, I understood as a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things." The whole process is the way
the
"When
mind works.
Let any one recall the conception of God that he had at five years of age, then that at ten, then that of his teens, then that of early manhood, and so on till mature age. How his conception, his mental image, of God has changed. We may smile as we recall our early and vital ones. But they were upward steps of the spirit. Some minds cling to those given and formed in the catechetical period. Others break them up in a skeptical period, and declining the
further task of forming new and better ones, remain at the skeptical point for the rest of their lives. Earnest
souls hear the impelling cry, "Thou hast destroyed it. Build it again." Earnest souls go on and upward, idealizing old forms, tacitly stripping them of their grosser im-
more worthy ones are formed. God as "an exaggerated man," exaggerated by attaching the attribute of inport
till
finity to
human
while.
we human
till
driving us on, can no longer give any meaning to such infinitized conceptions. We cannot ascribe literal eyes or ears
greater
But "the
Me
in
me" keeps
82
MODERNISM IN EELIGION
attributes.
or wrath to God.
human
He He
is is
above and more than any such a living God, "in whom we live
and move and have our being," no longer wholly a separate object. Laplace was right when he said that he had swept the heavens with his telescope and found no such So we become object among or above the other objects. symbolists as regards our picture conceptions of what God is like. They still suggest and urge farther on till our dying hour. But if we are earnest souls, we find no cause
of agnostic skepticism.
We see
God
darkly,
it
may
be,
but
people in all religions. Yes surely in those of the Greeks and Persians, and others, as well as those of early Jews. Christianity need not be envious. Our God is not. The
!
self-same spirit has been co-working with all His human children in all stages of culture in every age of the world.
forms of experience, God has been making revelation of Himself to them. Sub-
Any
other view
is
skeptical.
is
In
all
jectively,
revelation
devout mature God has been changed by his enlarging experience. A great bereavement or a great joy comes to him, and his idea of God is enlarged. A Lisbon earthquake or an Oriental famine sword and pestilence the unthinkable horrors of a great war, all the experiences he lives through, or even
; ;
Take a a process of discovery. Christian. Let him trace how his idea of
only hears of
is like.
all
His God
these change his conception of what God is enlarged to take in all his experience.
always given sometimes in our feeling of dependence, sometimes in the sense of the infinite, sometimes in the mystic sense of His presence in us and encompassing
is
God
us.
"The hound of
heaven'^ follows us
WHAT
4
IS
GOD LIKE
83
And
3|E
unperturbed pace.
9p
9|E
SJ?
^p
Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, fondest,
I
am He
Thou
who
dravest Me."
But is this all that a Christian can say ? We may say that God reveals Himself through one's experiences in life. But I am a social being. God reveals himself through
others; not only through the experience of the race
and
through our social experience, but through the great light that shines through great and holy men. To see the peace and joy, the calm and the energy in some good man, is to have a vision of v^hat God is like. That v^as the impression Jesus made upon his disciples in Judea and upon his
disciples in all countries To see Jesus is to see
is like.
He was
like
God God
:
incarnate in
^'I,
human
limitations.
and
my
form, and under all human Father are one,'' and may all
these be one in us, "as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee." That was his abiding consciousness and his constant prayer. best see what
In the
life,
we
God
is like.
Here conception
more concrete perception. See God Jesus of Nazareth, and it becomes an abiding and an ineffaceable likeness of God, with all its natural and logical implications of his pre-incarnate "form of God" and of
his post-incarnate life with the Father.
is
"He
that hath
seen me, hath seen the Father." Any earnest man who cannot rise to the speculative knowledge of God as the triune absolute, nay, all men can
84
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
what God
is like.
many
of our conceptions of God. Jesus "the white man" of the doughboys the perfect man, they will bow the knee. Back to Jesus for our re-
back to Him for our best conception of what God is like. See His face and live His life as He manifestly intended that His disciples should do. That is the best subligion,
And
that
is
the
and intensely interested. See the face of Jesus! But which face of Him, you may rightly ask. There have been so many portraits ofernists in religion are earnestly
fered during the different ages of the church. He has become a veritable protean Christ. The old sea god Proteus changed his forms in order to elude his pursuing suppliants.
Not
so Jesus.
''appear in
another form" to His disciples after his resurrection, it was always for the purpose of self-rev elation in a higher but real form. The other protean forms have been made
by men, as they have seen Him with vision distorted by their temporary world-views. The Jewish Messiah was the first portrait. The Greek Logos was the next; then Christ as a ransom to the devil then Christ as a satisfaction to the injured honor of God; then as a propitiation to an angry Deity. Then the Christ as vindictive judge, as painted by Michelangelo on the wall above the altar in the Sistine chapel, devoid of beauty and tenderness and all winning and consolatory aspects a Christ to be feared. Then we have the Christ of romance and the effeminate
;
Christ; pictures of the ethical Christ; Christ as a great man; as the highest ethical man; Christ as high priest;
Christ as king and finally Christ as "prisoner of the tabernacle," the reserved materials of his memorial feast, wor;
Some feature shiped by many as an idol is worshiped. of the face they all have caught but how many they have The words of Isaiah may rightly be recalled blurred.
WHAT
IS
GOD LIKE
:
85
as most applicable to tliem all "His visage more than that of any man, and his form
sons of
little
men"
(Isaiah lii:14).
"Our
little
systems," men's
Christ,
"They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, Lord, art more than they/'
Christ the many-named, and yet no
is
And
He
student of the Gospel narratives who can see the local color given by the Jewish disciples some forty years after his leaving the earth. It is a universal human face. It surpasses all his painters in color or in words. The man surpasses all his biographers and they never tell the full story
even the Evangelists. They interpreted Him in their own dialect as a Jewish Messiah. The manysidednesses of Jesus helps to account for the many varying
of his life
^not
The other explanatory portraits of the universal man. factor is the simple psychological fact that the mind receives the
new
in the
web
of old views.
Men
of their mental preconceptions and grooves of thought. An old legend says: painter came to Jesus whilst
in the midst of the crowd and endeavored to portray Him, but failed because of the infinite way the expression of the face changed. It reflected constantly the faces
He was
of
one face so
much
took a towel and pressed it to His face, saying, "The portrait of Christ may not be drawn by hands lest at any
should be said this and this only was Christ." And He gave to the painter the miraculous likeness imprinted on the towel, and then the further blessing "Thou
time
it
86
MODERmSM
m EELIGION^
couldst not paint my face, for the reflection there of the face of the common man. Behold, henceforth, thou shalt not attempt to paint the face of any common man, but
my
Modernists may well study all the portraits of the Master. In many of them they will find lineaments of a
face that inspires, uplifts, consoles, and energizes. In some of them they will see abhorrent and distorted features.
One
to
of these
is
an outraged God an attempt to explain how God is reconciled to man, instead of the truth that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.'' This repellent view still lingers in the formulas and symbols of many churches that have outgrown literalism and take it
But the symbolism is that of paganism symbolically. rather than even that of Judaism. And, at first, it was
all
was what an English Archbishop calls "a reversion to the worst ideas of pagan sacrifice, savoring of the heathen temple and reeking with blood." Jesus Himself never thus conceived of Himself.
taken in
all its
crude literalism.
It
Paganism painted this portrait of an unworthy abhorrent Christ. The Rev. S. D. McConnell styles it ^^the inhuman ^ and makes trenchant criticism of this pagan Christ," portrait that still hovers as a symbol in our dogmas and
liturgies.
What
truth and any of the spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of others. That was the spirit of the Master culminating in His death on
gives its phraseology any semblance of vitality for Christian nurture is the truth
become the most vital symbol of this spirit. That is the spirit of the Master that always wins. That is the spirit in saints and heroes, that we inthe cross.
cross has
The
He gave his life stinctively say is divine. He died for me for his country! The cross-bearing of the Master, the that may well be called the heart sacrifice of love for men
!
"Christ."
S.
D. McConnell.
Macmillans, 1904.
WHAT
IS
GOD LIKE?
87
of the Gospel ; that may show us the heart of the Father. *'God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." In the cross of Christ all Christians glory. His
cross,
His
spirit of self-sacrifice
all
those called
upon
/
any wonder, then, that you ask, which face of Jesus must we see to see what God is like ? Is there not a more genuine one ? Is it any wonder that modernists are saying, "Back to Jesus of Nazareth.'' Back to the vision of his
Is
it
face as depicted by loving disciples, in their oral traditions; in their memorabilia written for propaganda purbetter back through them to the Master, more clearly seen by the aid of modem Biblical criticism. God is like this Jesus in all his ethical and spiritual characterisposes.
tics.
But
Other faces of
Him
are partial,
some of them
caricatures. It is Christ as a divine official that is given in all the theological theories of the atonement and "plans of sal-
Modernists feel that the theological Christ does not give us so winsome a Christ as the one portrayed in
vation.''
There we find scarcely a trace of officialism. That began with the writers of the Epistles, and developed through the thought of the Greeks and the political lives of the Romans. Our world-view is different from both of
the Gospels.
these.
and pragmatic methods. Imperialism is democracy. We would fain have modern conceptions for our setting of Jesus of Nazareth. The traditional and largely the conventional portraits of the Master blur the sweet image of his face and deaden the tenderness of his touch, by a mechanical officialism that was far from his mind. "Sir! we would see Jesus," disrobed of the officialism of the theological
by inductive supplanted by
Him
by men
of other world-views.
88
clad in
MODEEOTSM
IltsT
KELIGIOISr
modern raiment, speaking to our day as He spoke so freely to the people of His own day on earth. That, at least, is the program of modernists to see that face as kith and kin with themselves and as kith and kin
Judaized, then Hellenized and scholasticized into theologies. Jesus has been sacerdotalized into
first
a magic worker.
new
Historical and critical investigations show law-giver. how all of these forms that mark His face originated, and how much they have availed and still avail in keeping up
homage to Him. They do not avail with most modernists. The fresh, vivid and inspiring portrait they find beneath all these marring portraits of Him. They would
unbecoming and outworn garments. They would see Him in the vesture He really wore on earth; see Him working for the Kingdom of God on earth, rising in spirit above those Judaic garments and
see Jesus disrobed of these
limitations, into a universal
human view
of this
Kingdom.
And
yet they are not pessimistic enough to read church history as a history of decline.
form carried the Gospel through the dark and the middle ages, and how much the doctrinal form carried it through these ages and through Keformation times. They would not raze those old forms to the earth. They would keep them for those whom they would still serve as ministrant to their religious needs. They would modernize them as much as possible, and would build an additional form in
keeping with the old architecture, but
fitted
with
modem
conveniences; form a new convolution to the growing all as means to nautilus, a new layer to the old trunk
make
religious nur-
WHAT
childhood's picture of
IS
GOD LIKE?
89
what God is like was that of His This was a Jewish physical conception, all-mightiness. long regnant in Christian theology and largely displacing the distinctively Christian and ethical conception of a
Father's love.
could do anything and everything. But mere might or potency is not an ethical attribute. To-day Christians
God
have progressed out of Judaism enough to replace that conception with that of Christ's conception of lo've, in
thinking of what God is like. Almightiness has passed away as being the chief attribute of God. Then as to the extent of the physical universe. Imaginations palls in attempt to conceive of its immensity, its boundlessness as revealed through the use of the telescope.
The starry world bounded by the vault of heaven. vault of heaven bounded the universe of one sun, one moon, and many stars, that constituted the universe of the anThe
cients.
But
there
is
no bound
to that of
modern men.
It is boundless.
So, too, has the conception of His creative action been lengthened immeasurably in time and space. His crea-
tion "out of nothing" at any definite time is replaced with the conception of His continuous creation. "My Father
worketh hitherto." The outering of Himself in creation has been an eternal process, motived, self-necessitated by His nature as Love. Creation is a process to and from that. "The whole creation ( KTlais ) groaneth and travailin birth and life process. The divine is imeth in pain" manent and working in it all; immanent but not limited by His time and space universe. But this divine immanence is of a piece with, and of the same substance as. His divine transcendence. ]N'ature is more than His garment. Nature is His dwelling place with us men. In dis-
covering
its
laws,
we
Him.
90
MODERNISM
m RELIGIO:Nr
creation.
We
find unity, order, purpose and progress in it, and thus lose the need or the desire for any abstract supernatural
interference with
He
is
not
the absentee
thought.
God
of the deist or of
much popular
in
Christian
away
knowledge.
He
Mundi)
^'
.
.
is
:
more than the great world-soul more than Goethe's earth spirit:
(Animus
by.''
.at the roaring loom of time I ply, And weave for God the garment thou seest him
is
He
of time and space, who The universe is the utterance, the outerance of Himself
in creation and in the process of His immanent selfThat on revelation in the historical experiences of men.
the part of
men
is
form
we
see
His face
in the face of
The
book of Genesis
Christian ages, has finally passed away through the warfare of science with theology. Many of us are old enough to remember the bitter warfare made on science in behalf
of that old view.
and much in the same way, has passed the old view of the creation of man. "Out of the dust of
Along with
this
beginnings of life in the protoplasm, up through forms of life the ascent of the animal into the first form of pithecanthropos (some
the earth"
is still
true.
Out of the
first
(250,000 years ago) up to the homo sapiens of Asia (some 25,000 years ago)^ upward has been the process of man's
WHAT
creation, of
IS
GOD LIKE?
91
man's ascent into his present form. Some call it evolution and the struggle for existence, some call it God and the ascent of animal life. Why should we continue to think and talk in terms of what is clearly seen to be folk-lore rather than science?
Man
image and likeness of God.'' That is the archetypal idea. And the end is not yet. His creation and man's ascent still go on, "till we all come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv, 13), the generic man, the fully created man. But why do we not come to this more rapir^Iy? Here comes the old enigma, the old discord of sin. I know no
better theological definition of
Westminster
Shorter
of conformity unto, or transgTession of the law of God," as I know no better answer to its first question, "what is the
chief end of
man?"
and
to enjoy
Him
is
forever."
freedom.
positive.
Sin
It is
not merely privative, a negation. It is not merely the state of man in the lower
It is a state of man's consciousness. stage of evolution. And of all proposed solutions there is none better than that
which attributes
feeling of guilt.
it
to
man's freedom of
will.
Hence the
the struggle with the patent damnably positive effects of sin. It comes not with a mythical fall of the first Adam. It comes rather with a sense of broken unity with God. It is not a positive in-
Hence
Simon Peter
sinful
cried out:
"Depart from
me
for I
am
Lord" (Luke v. 8). Jesus did not depart from him. But Peter did forsake all and followed Him. Publicans and sinners did not flee His face. "This man
man,
92
MODERNISM IN
RELIGIOltT
was tlie complaint of the complacently churchman of his day. Before the face of
Jesus the sting of sin is ameliorated into the sense of shame, so gentle is He in all His non-lordly attitude toward sinners. The blush on the face of Peter, and the blush on the face of the woman taken in adultery show how the
sense of sin became a sense of
Jesus.
the sting of
conscious guilt.
As Walt Whitman
sings:
is
^^They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God ;
Not one
is dissatisfied,
not one
demented.^'
the modernist conception of salvation and how it is effected has little in common with theological theories.
Then
Salvation means the getting of the mind of the Master into one's soul; into the corporate souls of all God's children.
the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of selfsacrifice, the spirit of service, just so far are we saved here, and just so far we shall be saved when we pass
as
So far
we have
Saved from our sins rather than from future punishment! Saved through gazing on the face of Jesus and being transformed into His image as we His love for us gaze in passionate adoration upon it. begets love for Him, and we go onward in His spirit of service to our fellows. We become like the one we love. We become reconciled to Grod through Him. God needs no reconciliating offering from man. Why not let the old
into the
Kingdom
above.
Why
not take eTesus' parable of the Prodigal and sufficient "plan of salvation ?'' The
blush of shame on the face of the self-banished returning son, and the Father's yearning heart going forth to wel-
come him
/
That
is all.
WHAT
IS
GOD LIKE?
93
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, standing outside of any church, gives the following judgment of a historian as to the in"It was reserved for Christianity to fluence of Jesus: present to the world an ideal character, which through
all
impassioned love; and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; and has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said
of
that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than
men with an
the disquisitions of philosophers, and than all the exhortations of moralists. This has been the wellspring
all
of whatever
and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the church, it has preserved in the character and example of its Founder an enduring principle of regeneration."
is
best
Charles
ter the
enter,
Lamb
once said:
Modernists do not stop with Jesus of the Gospels. Their appeal is also to the Jesus of the experience of his disciples
to-day, as well as that of those in other days. They do not stop with His perfect humanity, as their experience leads them on to confess his divinity. But they do this in
other than speculative ways. They will never be able they do not wish it to form a purely speculative creed like the Athanasian one. They are first of all resolute in their
neglected and the much needed emphasis on the perfect humanity of their blessed Lord and Master, as being sympathetic, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, because of His own human experiinsistence on putting the
ence.
much
Many
ISTicene phrase,
"and was
94
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
really believing
it.
They teach that the real person of Jesus was God, veiled, masqued under human form; that he was at all times omnipotent and
This they do under the abstract conception of the total dissimilarity of the divine and the human, denying their kith and kinship, which alone makes the inomniscient.
carnation thinkable.
is
Jesus never claimed the om?i{-attributes. Omm-potence not an ethical attribute. Jesus was ethical and did not
it
need
Yes, Jesus?
their
we must go back to Jesus for salvation. To which To Jesus of the Evangelists; to their traditions, memories, more or less idealized in their way more
;
are to go or less blurred from our point of view. back to their traditions, and then through them, and see
We
Him
with our modern eyes. We are to see all of the New Testament books with the
interpreting and instructive results of the Higher Criticism. But we are told that the church is prior to the New
Testament; that it was written by the church, and must be interpreted by the church that the church has "sealed So some are barkening back to the preorders'' about it. reformation "bound Bible" theory. It is true that Christian communities and churches had come into existence some years before the Gospels were written. There was no The Church then, but only churches, or rather Christian communities. Moreover, they were founded on the oral Gospel, which was prior to, and creative of them. There is one sense in which it is true that the church gave the New Testament. There were many inspiring Christian books written and used by Christians besides those contained in our New Testament. It was not till the Council of Carthage (A. D. 397) that a selection was made and canonized. Most of the others have been lost. Some of them may have been as good as, or even better than, some
;
WHAT
that were canonized.
IS
GOD LIKE?
95
of
Thus the Didache, or the Teaching the Twelve Apostles, discovered in 1875 and written
about 130 A. D., might well have taken the place of the Epistle of St. James, which Luther stigmatized as an It is written much in the same vein ^^Epistle of Straw." that is from the point of view of a Christian Jew,
or a Jewish Christian.
"sealed orders" to prevent the free scholarly research and interpretation of any sacred literature. So we go to the New Testament with modern eyes.
CHAPTER
VII
inquiry into the origin, history, authenticity and character of any piece of literature. It is not captious, censorious and fault-finding but a constructive
of a case.
Its
aim
is
that
of
rather than of depreciation. The Bible is or a collection of pieces of the sacred literature of the
Christians.
It is a record of the
;
religious experience of many men in many ages of their discovery of the revelation of the divine in and through
the human.
the word
done.
But
and
kind
It stands as completed as do the works of Homer As literature it is subject to the same Plutarch. of criticism as is applied to the Iliad or to the sacred
books of any other religion. This criticism has reached quite a fairly unanimous agreement, as to the questions of authorship, authenticity and dates as regards the various books of the New TestaCriticism also concerns itself with the question ment.
of what the books contain
that content to
ten.
what was the true meaning of those for whom they were primarily writ;
matter of interpretation, the question of the The Personality of Jesus becomes of supreme interest.
this
In
96
97
Person of Jesus of ISTazareth as portrayed in tlie Gospels that is the main question of the day for criticism and
the
main interest for Christians. First came the critical study of the
an examination
of the different
manu-
scripts and versions in order to discover the original text, or at least to establish the most accurate text possible. This is styled the Lower Criticism, When literary criti-
was styled the Higher Criticism to distinguish it from the former. There is nothing arrogant or obnoxious in the term higher, though literary would be a better term to use. It is simply one form of Bible study. Its work is done in the historical spirit. We must know how the literature grew in order to understand it, and to
cism began
it
It get the true, i.e., the historical interpretation of it. asks, what are the times, places, the circumstances, the
object and the author's point of view in regard to each book. Is Job a drama ? Is the predictive element the chief one in the Prophets ? Are the books traditionally ascribed
to
istic
If
so,
how
was the author and what was his purpose ? How much did he owe to his predecessors, and how much was his own work molded and colored by the
sort of a person
What
comparative study of other sacred books afford? What further light is given by the new psychology and by These are some of the questions to science in general? which answers are sought by the literary criticism of the books of the Book. The work is constructive, and aims at giving us a more It living book, even for the purpose of devotional use. gives us a new Bible, rescued from the fetters of tradition,
by
98
MODERNISM
m EELIGIOJST
a practical purpose? That practical purpose, at a time when it was thought that an infallible authority of some kind was necessary, was its only justification. And what
unnecessary work and worry it caused for three centuries! Arduous and ardent has been the study required and given by the holders of this idea of the Bible even greater and fully as disinterested as that expended by
a
lot of
the
modern
critics.
They had
;
to maintain the
;
Mosaic
authorship of the first five books of the Bible the literary integrity of the book of Isaiah the equal inspiration and authority of a verse in the book of Leviticus with a verse in the Gospels. They had to work at the impossible task of constructing a harmony out of conflicting accounts in
the four Gospel narratives. God fearing and scholarly were those men, only spending their labor in vain.
the worry this theory has caused countless multitudes of devout souls, hearing all the criticisms put upon it
Then
by friend or
Think of the worry caused them by a book like that of Robert G. Ingersoll's "The Mistakes of Moses." Such a book could not be written to-day. If it were it would appear as the product of a belated intellifoe.
gence.
need not stop to give the generally accepted results of the literary criticism of the Old Testament. Suffice
that Bibliolatry of the Old Testament, that extravagant and uncritical devotion to it as literally the
it
We
to say,
Word
of God, apart from any scientific estimate of its contents, is now a thing of the past. Our interest is chiefly with regard to the New Testament
literature.
not open to the same sort of study that we should give, say, to the Koran the sacred Book If not, why not? No negative of the Mohammedans?
Is
it
answer
is
possible.
The
devotional use of
it
under the
traditional view of its infallibility throughout, gives a temporary call to halt. But when the critical work is
99
new
worry they
will be freed
indiscriminate use of proof -texts; from stretching and straining of the Scriptures to form a harmony between
its
various parts
faulty texts,
from the burden of obscure passages and and from many other troublesome questions
;
modern eyes, preted 'New Testament and as containing the lively word of the living God. The Gospels are the record of some of the words and
works of Jesus. How much more we should like to have of these words and works We read in the Gospel according to St. John: ^'And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could
!
newly
inter-
St.
John
meant
that
is
this as
fact.
been the
Apostles and the Epistles, which give us the preaching of the Apostles the proclaiming the Gospel message the im;
had made upon them and how they thought it mighty to save men. Literary criticism has the revised Greek text to work upon. This revised Greek text has been the work of the
pression
it
Lower Criticism
On
in its study of the early manuscripts. the basis of this study it leaves out of our version
the following passages: St. Mark xvi. 9-20 and St. viii. 1-12. It also brackets St. Luke xxii. 43-4; St.
V. 3-4,
John John
and
St.
Matthew
xvi. 2-3.
or the literary criticism begins with the study of the authenticity and genuineness of the books of the New Testament. As regards the Fourth Gospel it finds
The Higher
100
MODERNISM
IJST
EELIGION
the authorship of it to be doubtful. But it at least gives us the impression of a loving disciple as to what Jesus said
Practically we have all four of our Gospels left as authoritative narratives, though only the first three are
and
did.
generally quoted by most critics. Here I venture to summarize the general results of the I have not been able to find literary Biblical criticism.
such a summary. Mine is made without any scholarly study of the subject, but I think that it states fairly the
general view. The first half of the Old Testament, Job, is regarded as a national history.
acles
up
to the
book of
It contains mir-
more than
X. 13.
incredible,
and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies," that of raising the iron ax-head from the river of Jordan (II Kings, vi. 6) not to mention many others.
Joshua
*^The sun stood
very low anthropomorphic conceptions of God, not much above that of some contemporary forms of paganism. It puts a "Thus saith the Lord," before commands that we now esteem immoral. Let any one read this part of the Old Testament carefully and then ask
It
contains
how he must estimate it in view of the New Testament. But from Job onward, we have men of vision preachers
;
of righteousness in a lofty sense; uttering the voice of the Lord much more in accordance with New Testament
Our elders did not gi^eatly err in holding conceptions. that they found the Gospel in the Prophets. When we come to the New Testament we likewise find
about a third part of it to be a history or a biography of Jesus of Nazareth, and the latter part to consist in the
utterances of those
or preached in his name. It is the biographical and historical part that here The question is how far this part is hisinterests us.
who prophesied
'
101
and biographical in our sense of these terms. Here the historical method must be used, just as we use it
like parts of
when studying
ments.
any other
religious docu-
begin with the theory of an oral Gospel, held in some form, by all Bible students. This hypothesis, as held
before the growth of
We
modem
lows
The Evangelists drew upon a primitive official oral gospel, drawn up by the apostles or by one of them, which, though unwritten, was handed down orally without even verbal change till the time when the Gospels were written.
This theory cannot stand in light of divergencies and discrepancies found in the written Gospels. There are no written Gospels contemporary with the life of Jesus, only those written between the years 70 and 100 A. D. Then they were written in Greek, while Jesus spoke in the Aramaic language. Up to that time the story had been handed on through an oral Gospel, necessarily and evidently much larger than the parts of it recorded for special purposes in our written ones. The New Testament criticism traces the literary evolution of the Gospels out of the traditional and oral form. It was not until about A. D. 70 that the first one, that of St. Mark, was written. The date of St. John's Gospel is All agree that it could not have been still in dispute. earlier than A. D. 100. St. Mark's Gospel is held to give the most exact form of the oral tradition, and the most
vivid and life-like portrait of the Master, though his Gospel seems like a bare transcript of fragmentary sayings and isolated acts of the Master. Later on two great, though
perhaps unconscious artists, trained in the movement, begun by the Master and saturated by His spirit, retell
the tale, idealizing
if
you will
the
picture, but in so
102
]aoi>EEN-iSM IK RELIGIO]^
doing make us realize something of the majesty and tenderness which once men knew in Galilee.^
*I am indebted to Professor Wm. H. P. Hatch of the Episcopal Theological School for this note on the Four Gospels: "We must distinguish carefully between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel according to St. John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the 'SjTioptic Gospels' because they have the same general view ( avvo\j/is ). In order to be understood, they must be studied together. The question of the relation of these Gospels to one another is known as the 'Synoptic Problem'; and it is important to note that it is a literary problem. "New Testament scholars are agreed that Mark is the earliest and the most primitive of the Synoptic Gospels. The writer records the words and deeds of Jesus in a fresh and vivid way. Many scholars accept the ancient tradition that Mark is based primarily on the discourses of Peter. The Gospel is generally ascribed to one John, surnamed Mark, who was a companion of Paul and Barnabas and perhaps also of Peter. It was probably written in Rome shortly before or soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. "Matthew and Luke are certainlj' later than Mark, for the authors of both used Mark as one of their principal sources. Moreover, the portrait of Jesus in these Gospels is less primitive than that of Mark. An Aramaic source consisting primarily of sayings of Jesus and known to modem scholars as Q (from the German Quelle, source) was employed in the composition of Matthew and Luke. Q may have been in two forms or recensions, one appearing in Matthew and the other in Luke. Some think that Q was also used in the production of Mark. In addition to Mark and Q the author of Luke had certain other sources, Aramaic as well as Greek, at his disMatthew is the work of a Jewish Christian, not of the posal. Apostle Matthew. It is more Jewish in character tlian any of the other Gospels, and was probably written in Syria or Palestine some time during the last two decades of the first century. Luke, which is ascribed in Christian tradition to a companion of Paul, was intended for Gentile readers, the author himself probably being a Gentile. It also was written some time during the years 80-100, but the place of its composition is unknown. "The Fourth Gospel is an interpretation of Jesus rather than a record of His words and deeds. Its point of view is philosophical or theological, and its portrait of Jesus is in certain fundamental respects very different from that found in the Synoptic Gospels. It is traditionally ascribed to the Apostle John, who is believed by many to have lived and taught at Ephesus until about the year 100. The Johannine authorship of the Gospel, however, is fraught with serious The Fourth difficulties, and most scholars have now abandoned it. is a fusion of Palestinian, Pauline, and Hellenistic elements. Gospel It was probably composed at or near Ephesus in the first decade or decade and a half of the second century by some member of the Ephesian circle. If the Apostle John really resided in Ephesus, the Gospel may contain some traditions or ideas that were derived from him."
103
This gives the stages in the literary evolution of the These Gospels have different aims and there is Gospels. evidently no attempt to present the same events or to follow a common chronology. But for a period of about forty years, the story of the life of Jesus was handed down in oral form. Literary criticism rightly surmises that in this stage there may have been additions and subtractions
and
were put in writing in nearly the present form of our Gospels. At least it cannot be that an oral story, passed from mouth to ear and thence to other ears, could remain identical or inerrant. We know how rumor grows, how a story thus passed to one, and then handed on to another to repeat, never ends as it began. Give what credit is due to the ability of men in those days to thus transmit a story with verbal literalness, we cannot think that it had inerrancy or lack of diversity. Critics make
tions
Gospels.
They ask what was the historical origin of the Gospels? How did they grow from the oral to the written form? Then, what was the purpose of their authors and what did they really mean to themselves and to those for whom
they were written, always remembering that the common view was that Christ would return to earth before that
generation had passed away. Thus they work their way to the matter of chief interest, that of the personality of
the Master, in the light that shines through the pages of disciples, who never fully understood Him, but did not
was by attributing more value to At least the ^'signs and wonders" than He Himself did. Gospels are not stenographic reports of the words and
exaggerate, unless
it
works of Jesus. What then is the most reliable biography we can get out of them ? These critics have sifted them all to discover just what Jesus was, and what His message was. Then, how it was understood or misunderstood in
104
MODEROTSM
m RELIGIOI^
the primitive community, whicli was eagerly expecting His speedy second coming. The system of a single harmonious
narrative gives place to an attempt to interpret the varying forms of one message. In this interpretation the following conceptions are used. First, a writer can only tell
the story and give the message by means of ideas and conSo we must first try to put ceptions of his own times.
ourselves in his place, see with his eyes and hear with his ears. What is the background of historical traditions ; what
the social and religious customs ; and what the general education of himself and of those for whom he wrote ? Sec-
ondly, we must not think that Jesus meant no more than what the average hearer would understand about His message.
He
last
had
to
speak
much
to
them in
parables.
In His
days He said to His disciples, "I have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now." He poured new wine into their old bottles, till they fairly burst and could bear no more. The Master is greater than His biography, oral or written. Then, when a verse
very
or a passage or the account of some of His signs and wonders seems discrepant with other parts of their story, we are to test them by the main tenor of His life and message,
regard them as not authentic. Some such canons of interpretation should be in the mind of every one who seeks to read the Gospels intellielse to
gently.
And
him
of the burden of
many
great difficulties which meet those who read them as literal stenographic reports of what Jeeus said and did. This
reading done, then comes the question as to the Then truest portrait that can be drawn of the Master. the question how His own message can be translated or
critical
stated to us
modems,
as
He
stated
it
to the modernists of
His own day, due allowance being made in both cases for the limitations of both teachers and hearers. These are the burning questions of the day. What re-
105
translation is to be
was
its first
modern terms for people of modem times one perhaps for the Oriental mind and one for our Occidental
tion in
mind.
What modernized portrait can we paint of Jesus ? How shall we modernize His message so as to further His gospel of the Kingdom of God on earth and His work of saving
souls here, as well as hereafter.
think of Christ and His gospel message ? That was the Master's First, what think ye of Christ? own question to His disciples then, and sometimes they answered Him wrongly. That has been His question to
What can we
men
have answered Him imperfectly. It is His question to men of our age, and we must give our best answer, though it cannot come up to the full truth of that which He was. Many men within the church are hungering for some fresh vision of the great light that once shone in Judea, Can the modernas shown in a previously quoted letter. As least they can give a more intelligent ists give it? way to read the original Gospels. They can give some
of every age and
all
new
We
lines for a fresh portrait of the Master, j shall give a fuller statement in considering the
"What think ye of Christ ?" was treated that the question in the papers given in the late Conference of modernists
in the
way
by such
Paul" and other critical questions. The first line would be that of a real incarnation, the Word made flesh the real humanity of Christ with human limi"Jesus or
;
tations, except that of sinfulness ; a man among men, who walked and taught as a great leader. Jesus never claimed
106
MODERmSM
IN religio:n"
And
that
or omnipresence, in his incarnate form. real form in Judea. But the impression
was His He made was that, in all matters moral and religious He was the full and complete revelation; the express image of His Father God. It is true that most modernists rise to the belief in
Christ^s divinity in a different way than I do. They use the inductive and pragmatic methods, which I think lower
than the speculative method. But then these are the methods which appeal most to the modern mind. And they do suffice to reach the same result, i. e., the Divinity of Christ. Give a real human Jesus first. When men receive that, they get the impression that will, in this age, as it did in the primitive age, leads on to that of His divinity.
human thou
is
art."
Critics
may
rightly charge
many
His Divinity
a way that denies it. Many with the old heresy of Docetism. That heresy taught that Jesus was only God hidden under a false mask of humanity. God could not suffer. Jesus did not really suffer. Jesus was not really man. There was no real incarnation. All wrong declare the old creeds which say, "And was made
yet many who say these creeds at least under-emphasize the truth of His humanity,
And
may seem
to
over-emphasize His
humanity. But modernists feel that that is a patent fact in the Gospels, and that that is now as then, the best way to present Jesus to win ardent, loving, loyal disciples who will soon come to worship Him as divine. Jesus was born and lived in lowly circumstances. He increased in wisdom, as well as in stature, and in favor with God, as well as with man. (St. Luke ii. 52.) He worked as a carpenter for
to
many
years.
He
Him, and He
men. These temptations really appealed had to wrestle with them to overcome them.
107
tempted like as we are, yet without sin," thereby becoming an high-priest who conld be touched with a feeling of our This same interpretator infirmities. (Heb. iv. 15.) of the oral Gospel also says that "he learned obedience by the things he had suffered; and having been made per." fect. (Heb. V. 8, 9.) A Christ who can be thus touched, is a Christ that touches the hearts of men. The
. .
stations to the cross on Calvary ; the sufferings of a true fellow man that has ever been the most appealing and win-
story.
who spake
That
is
the
man
spake
ecce
the
man
ecce
Deus!
of the early
church and the impression that the Gospel story will make upon men to-day. Present the Gospel picture of Jesus as
and His divinity will make sure of itself in the hearts and then in the minds of men. This will be purely an inductive process, as it was with the early disciples the impression of a man who was incomparably greater than any other, who was the actualized ideal of man, fully made into the image and likeness of God who was greater than the "I" of Jesus of Nazareth. (St. Johnxiv. 28.)
really
at the best,
physical proof. Only walk with Jesus and you will know that you are walking with God. Read the Gospel narratives
was a chief concern with Him, that men should think rightly about Him. That has
and see
if
it
been the bane of orthodoxy putting a correct belief about Him before that of a correct life in His spirit. In reading the Gospels let us put aside the idea of a wonder working super-msLn and dem^i-god, masquerading as orthodoxy. For
this is the old
took the place of the rational human soul in the historic Jesus. That rampant heresy in much dogmatic teaching
108
MODERKISM
m RELIGIO:tT
about Jesus, needs to be condemned again to-day, if not by a General Council, then by the general Christian con-
from a better understanding of Jesus His message. Without dwelling further on this fresh modern line for a new portrait of Jesus, let me refer to two books: that of Rev. Dr. Harry E. Eosdick on "The Manhood of the Master" and that of T. R. Glover on "Jesus of History."
sciousness, coming of the Gospels and
Perhaps
this
one
As
for the
modem
who will
Each one must dare to paint it as he sees it "for the God of things as they are." The Divinity of Jesus shines forth from every page of the Gospels. That of His Deity does not appear in them. This doctrine is the work of the thinking side of the
It thought out the impression made on men, and naturally and logically and rightly stated it in the Nicene
church.
But we must remember that Greek thought never conceived of God and man as wholly different from each other. Kith and kinship between the two was held as a
Creed.
fundamental conception.
God or man," would have been inconceivable to Greeks. "God and man" was their thought. They started with the impression made by Jesus on his contemporaries and on succeeding generations. They started as modernists do with, "Jesus, divinest when Thou
of "either
The dilemma
most himian
people use the former dilenmia they cannot reach the same results. Ordinary Christian thought generally stops at the first horn of the two heretical
art."
When
horns of the dilemma and says, "Jesus, God not man." Here are a few lines that the modernist finds for his "Never portrait of the ineffable Jesus of the Gospels. man spake like this man." He spoke not as the rigid traditionalist, the self-righteous
churchman of His day. He spoke with the authority of His personality, but never
109
become traditions for His followers to fight about, if tbey ever became scribes and pbariHe spoke the sees, as surely tbej ofttimes have become. sermon on the Mount, that Magna Charta for His way of
spoke of God as Father, never as King. He He wrought mighty spoke in the wonderful parables. deeds. He did not perform astounding wonders. He dislife.
He
approved of such
pf personality
;
signs.
surely
He
miracles for the good of performed many more of these than those re-
He was meek and gentle, but He was also fiercely indignant. He was a man of sorrows. He was also a man of
and of deeper joy in what we esteem His sorrows. He was unostentatiously magnanimous. He was also severely just. He was intensely loyal to His cause the Kingdom of God on earth. He was absolutely fearless and sincere. He loved common men and women. He did not love the scribes and pharisees who were harming others by keeping them out of the Kingdom, which they themselves refused to enter. He was conscious of fulfilling the old law by transcending its legalistic form with a spiritual content. He meant to kill legalism in religion. The church has not yet succeeded in keeping true to His ideal He was conscious of human limitations; in the matter. conscious of deriving all from the Father, and of subordiHe was consciously Master; conscious nation to Him. of His Messiahship and of a Spiritual Kingdom on earth. He was conscious of revealing the character of God, of His power to forgive sins, and of His own unique sonship. He was intensely religious and ethical. Yet he left no
natural
joy,
human
new
creed or decalogue. He left us, primarily, a new VMiy of living. First fellowship with God, through Him, and then fellowship with men in His Kingdom. These
Him.
110
MODERNISM IN
EELIGIOlSr
Let us turn briefly to the Master's mission, the masterpassion of His life. It is easily seen to be that of a revelation of the Father, in order to effect the enlargement of
His Kingdom on earth that of peace and good will among men. All of his teaching centers round His conception of
the
Kingdom
of
God
the
Kingdom
of heaven on earth.
Again, read the Gospels and you may be surprised to see how often He speaks of this Kingdom over a hundred times in the Synoptics, and four times in St. John, where the term "eternal life" is used as its equivalent. See too, how rarely he uses the terms salvation and saved as refer-
ring to salvation from punishment in the future life. And yet how vastly disproportional has been the use of this
latter conception.
the petty selfish conception of such a salvation dwindles into comparative insignificance. He that seeks thus to
save hisvindividual soul, here or hereafter, shall "lose it." Only they who are ready to lose their life for Ilis sake
shall save
it.
(St.
His Kingdom on earth; that state of mind and heart that makes for such That is the heart and mind of the Master, whose service. master passion was for the Kingdom of God on earth. His disciples never fully understood Him. He had adapted
salvation
meant
Luke
We
force, would have adopt it. it, as in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel and elsewhere. They wished to sit on His right and
left
Him
They were
ready to join in a warfare for its present establishment. Wlien he spake of the sword of the spirit, they flashed out two swords of the flesh. "It is enough," he said in wondrous condescension to their misunderstanding. Even after his resurrection their question was "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel" accord:
111
have places on His right and left for them to occupy. (Acts i 6.) But how piteously petty has heen the orthodox picture
:
He would
How,
How
at least, it has misrepresented Jesus' idea of salvation. much more has this conception of His mission been
over-emphasized, than that of his conception of the Kingdom. Christ's Kingdom-conception truly includes the
salvation of the individual soul, here and hereafter. In this Kingdom-conception, salvation is not in a belief, but in an activity. It is no easy matter. It is a following in the footsteps of His most holy sacrificial life. To enter that Kingdom a man must deny himself. His object can no longer be himself in any way. "Seek ye first the kingdom
his righteousness." One must renounce all the petty personal ambitions that bring enmity among men in their struggle for wealth and fame and power. One must
of
God and
keep his eye on the King and the Kingdom and serve in that Kingdom if he would walk in His footsteps, and thus have that sort of life that only is eternal and saving. Here
surely modernists are offering a new line to the view, the Master's own view as to his mission. I may refer to at
least
i.e.
J,
this
is
modem
the
"What
conception; Kingdom of
The Gospel
of the
Kingdom,
Gospel of
Jesus that modernists are bringing to the fore to-day, to replace the selfish conception of future salvation through right beliefs. Pray do read the so-called Athanasian creed and then read the Gospels. That creed was held as the
preeminent statement of orthodoxy in the middle ages and in some later ages. The clergymen of the Church of England are now required to use it only four times a year.
112
MODERNISM
American clergyman
it
IT^
EELIGI0:N'
an English church
An
officiating in
on one of these required occasions. He wrote to the Bishop of the diocese (Dr. Lightfoot) saying that he could not conscientiously use it. The Bishop^s reply was simply, "Don't.'' That is the reply of modernists. Glover well asks, "what has the Athanasian creed to do with Jesus of Nazareth ? Does it suggest His language.
omitted
not a hideous perversion ?" Surely it is all jargon to those who do not think in Greek thought. For those who formed it, it was full
attitude to
life,
His
His
spirit.
Is
it
and for centuries was esteemed to be a better statement of orthodoxy than the Nicene creed. Is it worth while, even if we had time, to Hellenize ourof
meaning and of
truth,
to be able to appreciate its truth? Is orthodoxy of intellect worth the trouble? Is it not better for us to try to think it all out in our own modem dialect ?
selves in a
way
a general statement of the old and the new view of the New Testament. The old view is too well known
Here
is
to
Suffice it to say that it was an acceptance of it as a whole, as the infallible word of God, without any historical and critical knowledge of
need a
full statement.
how
it
came
to be written.
It
was taken
as a book of divine
oracles, especially
on the intellectual side of doctrine as The Gospels were accepted as stenographic a new law. The Epistles were taken to reports of contemporaries.
be
their
authors'
final
statement
of
doctrines.
The
Apostles were miraculously inspired, and thought that they were writing the last word for future generations. The
without any regard to the framework of contemporary thought and history. modernist can possibly read the New Testament in
old view took
it all
[No
this way.
He knows
that
it
was
affected throughout
by
contemporary ideas and beliefs. He knows to-day just what these were. He knows better than any previous generation could know the historical conditions under which
113
knows their historical framework and the purpose for which the authors wrote. He recognizes that they had the vivid experience that begets
books were written.
the creative impulse, that later writers do not have. He grants that its intrinsic worth makes it the most inspired of all books. It has stood the test of the ages, and it can stand
He
on
merits through all forms of criticism that seek to understand it. It needs no arbitrary theory of infalliThe Gospels as well as the Epistles bility to uphold it.
its
own
were called for by definite needs of the times. The generation of those who had seen Jesus in the flesh was passing away. Missionary labors of the Apostles had founded
numerous widely scattered Christian communities. They The oral Gospel took differed greatly one from another. many forms and was given different interpretations. There was a call for chronicling the main facts, but only relatively a few of the facts of the life and teachings of their
common
Master.
On the older theory given up. The authors themselves differed from this was necessary. each other, both in mental characteristics and in other
is
The writers differ much in the account them. The vain attempt to construct a har-
Each one painted the picqualifications for their work. ture the best he could for the purpose in hand. They did not imagine that they were writing a book of oracles for
all
future time.
This
is
St.
Paul
difficulties.
But
circumstances and general world-view, they were surely But their inspired work inspired to write as they did. is now read by modernists, who understand and make allowance for these limitations, in interpreting their messages.
we do
believe
it
Yes,
believe
114
MODEROTSM
IIST
EELIGIO:Nr
to it?"
We
give
it all
authority due to it as a progressive revelation of God, culminating in that made through Jesus of Nazareth. Protestants were right in appealing from a fallible church to the Bible. They erred in making it infallible in all its
parts.
They became
it
Bibliolaters.
They were
right in
making
authoritative.
Article
VI
of the
XXXIX
Articles of Religion in the Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church, states the position of all Protestants :
all
tion: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it
authoritative to-day, only It stands stripped of its foreign garb of infallibility. above the reason of the individual. It limits the authority
We
of the church.
longer can
it
is
be true that
No
"This
And
this the
!^^odem Biblical criticism frees us from such misuse by giving us the Bible, in each of its books, as it was written with the time, place, circumstances and purpose. And with the vast accumulation of information on these subjects to-day, it can do this, as no previous age could have done it. So we answer your questions frankly. No, we do not believe the Bible as you, with your arbitrary theory of But we do believe it in absolute infallibility, believe it. a truer way. We have tried the old way and have honestly been forced out of it. We have tried the new way, and We find it to give us a more inspiring word of God.
I
115
should not dare to teach the Bible to our children or our congregations on the old theory. It is not true. Only a
cannot treat the belated intelligence could do so. Bible as the Mohammedans do their Koran, as something dropped straight from heaven in a few years.
We
through the religious experience of men in many ages. It has sixty-six books, each with a It is thus It is chiefly to be used devotionally. history. life giving. But it is to be studied as a sacred literature.
It has
come
to us
CHAPTER VIII
CULT
cultivation of intimacy with God; the system of ways of access to Him. It would take us too far afield to make any worthy study of
means the
CULT
this
phase of every religion. Suffice it to say that cult lies near the very heart of religion. It is religion's first expression. In and through it passionate need and
Here true atonepassionate love express themselves. ment of God and man is both symbolized and realized.
give this testimony of spirit harIn morality there ever remains that
constant struggle for attainment, which St. Paul so graphically and so piteously depicted in the seventh chapter of
his Epistle to the
Romans.
an asymptotic approach.
Cult
is
a double-sided activity. Both God and man give and receive. The spirit of loving sacrifice on both sides
becomes the reconciling spirit, giving calm and rest and renewed energy to the worshipper. The souFs aspiration finds here its fruition. God is merciful and friendly.
realizes his
own
reconciliation
this constitutes the real significance and the vital essence of religion. The cult may be of the sim-
And
plest kind, such as silent prayer in a Quaker meeting. Or it may be of the most ornate kind in public worship. But some form of cult is generally necessary for man's realiza-
tion of the religious reconciliation. In the matter of the form of cult in Christianity, one should trace the influ116
CULT
117
ence of concurrent pagan cults upon the simple form of cult in the nascent church, changing it into the splendid ceremonial of the two great churches of the middle ages.
The natural
religious
instinct,
pagan cults, is always active in this sphere. Christians borrowed and adopted much of the pagan forms. Alas,
they also incorporated their sacerdotalism into their cult. That is the bane which only the Reformation purged out
of our cults.
The
is
very
The splendor complicated, ritualistic and symbolical. of lights and colored vestments and of semi-barbaric pomp ;
the lowering of a curtain before the altar, while the priest consecrates the elements, and a male choir is chanting the Lord's Prayer antiphonally ; the raising of the curtain
showing the altar as a representation of the empty tomb of the risen Saviour; the distribution of the elements by in-
members standing the continuous lighting of candles by the members during the ceremony all this a Protestant views with mixed feelings of surprise and
stinction to the
;
reverence.
It is all too complicated and barbaric in splendor to be much of a stimulus to the religious life of a
western mind.
pass from the Greek church in Paris to the Roman church of La Madeleine. The people are all kneeling and praying. Wonderfully fine organ music fills the church
But
and thrills the soul. There is splendor of altar and vestments and gorgeous ritual, but it is not so semi-barbaric. It is simpler and grander and more appealing. One feels like bowing in lowly adoration as he realizes the presence of the spiritual Christ in the midst. Less than this can no devout Protestant experience present at a grand
high-mass in La Madeleine. Pass now to the lowly chapel of the McCall Mission, in an adjoining street where it began some forty years ago. Here the cult is of the simplest and Protestant form.
118
MODERNISM
m EELIGIOlSr
Praise and prayer and Scripture reading and the reverent celebration of the Lord's Supper devoid of all the pomp
and ceremony of the Greek and the Roman liturgies, and lo, your feelings of awe and thanksgiving are deeply stirred. Christ is really present as the Host, and communes with you and you with Him. He enters the open
door of your heart as guest. He reclines there as your Host. The real presence of the living Christ that is the vital need of the soul. But who should dare to limit Give the form of cult through which this is mediated?
play to the imagination, stimulating the religious life to Let the those who need the pomp of ceremonialism. esthetic feeling be aroused for it is kith and kin to the Be plain, but not too plain. religious emotion. Of Cult we may say that Rome has too much and Protestantism too little. Protestants should have more sacramentalism, but purged of its pagan elements of sacerdotalism and formalism and asceticism.
It is only the danger of these besetting sins of sacramentalism that keeps many Protestants from having more
Bplendor of an esthetic ritual. With us prayer, public and private, might be made a more affective and effective part of our ritual than it is.
desire.
Sincere prayer
is
satis-
More things
this
Than
Wherefore let thy voice Else like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats
within the brain. If knowing God they lift not hands of prayer, Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
life
world dreams
CULT
whole round world is every way Bound by golden chains about the feet of God/'
119
For
so the
good gifts unto your children how much more shall your heavenly Father
"If ye then, being
;
evil,
know how
to give
give the
them that ask him?'' (St. Luke xi: 13.) parallel passage in St. Matthew says good things instead of The Holy Spirit. The Master's message was inclusive of both. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." Too often we reverse his order. We pray most Prayer is the utterearnestly for what we desire most. ance of our dominant desire. This is too often the desire for good things, and prayer becomes a begging that God's will may be changed to meet our desires. We seek to get
Holy The
Spirit to
will be done
that should be
as
earnestly as possible for the fulfilment of our other pressing desires. Pray for the gift of his Holy Spirit. How
feeble
and formal such prayer often is. It is not our dominant desire. But pray for it sincerely and our prayer will surely be answered, and all other needed things will be added thereto. But we dare not pray for this supreme It would flood our souls with such riches as would gift.
at least
dampen our
nominal indeed have a living and a conquering church. God soon fades out of the mind soon ceases to be the living reality of the soul of the man and of the church that ceases from fervent prayer for his Holy Spirit, and for all other good We should pray much alone or in fellowship with gifts. two or three more in corporate silence and meditation. We should stay in the silence with God the great Companion, who besets us behind and before and layest His
;
desires for other good gifts. If all Christians could fervently pray for it, we should
120
moder:n'ism in eeligio:n'
us.
hand upon
"Whither can I
flee
Why
should
we
not oftener
conscious presence with Him. In the sacrament of silence let a body of fellow Christians seek the soul of the universe
they grip and feel themselves gripped by that Soul. Going in from the hurly-burly of business enter with brain cells whirling about intellectual or practical problems; go
till
;
go into His holy temple and keep silence before Him. The peace that passeth a worldly man's understanding will come. You will gain
in,
life
and poise, and power and gentleness of spirit. I have cultivated the use of a simple non-ritualistic service in All Souls' only from fear of formalism, superstition and sacerdotalism so frequently produced by too much ritualism. Personally I could sometimes enjoy a much more ornate and esthetic form. I am not sure, however, that its continuous use would better serve the purpose
rest
of devotion for myself or the congregation. Besides the danger of formalism, in its use, there is the danger of
sacerdotalism creeping into its natural home. There is, It may divert too, the danger from the esthetic side.
attention
It
is
told of Michel-
angelo, that in painting the scene of the last supper, he had painted a wondrously beautiful chalice on the altar.
In showing it to a friend, he found that the chalice captivated his whole attention. The esthetic emotion that it
aroused eclipsed the central figure in the painting. With a stroke of his brush, he wiped out the chalice, saying, "nothing must be allowed to hide the face of Christ in the
painting."
Then pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. as freely and frankly for all other needs; for freedom
Pray
first
from
bereavements and calamities, yes, even pray for needed rain, always asking for the granting of these petitions, "as may be most expedient for us." The
suffering,
CULT
121
reign of law in nature will not prevent answer to all sucli The reign of law is the reign of our heavenly petitions. The fervent prayer of the righteous is always Father.
effectual
request
has too little of the responsive part of the congregation in her services. The priest and the choir perform it all. The same is true of the public services in many of the Protestant churches. The minister and the
choir perform
it all.
Rome
There
is
festivals, a fuller
round
of Jesus, including the Stations of the Cross. Then there is a need of having a calendar of modern saints' days;
holy men of modern type, remembrance of whom would stimulate us to a more robust and sane sort of Christian
lifa
Then
many more
prayers of the Christian ages. In other churches, there is need to use more extempore prayers. Enrichment of public service
in some, and modernizing it somewhat in other churches would help much in promoting the spirit of devo-
tion.
need of more sacramental forms of worforms through which the spirit enters the open door ship and communes with us. Perhaps the two that Protestants have kept are not enough. Matrimony is rightly, for the
Finally there
is
But where this rite partakes of Christian, sacramental. the nature of a civil contract, as it too often does, the sacramental view is impossible. Coming into full membership in the church should be made sacramental. Full of grace and help are all things sacramental outward tokens
of love ; "outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us."
The
upon a woman's
finger
by the
122
MODEROTSM
A
I:N'
EELIGIO:^r
man
wlio says, "with this ring I thee wed," thrills the bit of bunting heart with love divine. the stars and
stripes
soldier to
than he would without having it a letter, a warm handshake, and lo we are new creatures. One of the two sacraments that Protestants have kept is not observed as it should be. the Holy Communion Generally it is used too infrequently. When used frequently it is often used not rightly. Formalism and super!
and sacerdotalism are apt to pervert it. But what a means of communion with the Master we are missing in not having it more frequently. Starting with the rememstition
brance of the Master, the feast rises into mystic realms. The real presence of the real Christ is realized. He enters
the open door of the heart as guest. Host.
He
serves there as
CHAPTEK IX
MODERNISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
Church of England always has had a body of members known as Latitudinarians at one tirne,.^ then as Liberals and later on as Broad churchmen.
THE
They have been modernists in their days, who have insisted upon freedom of inquiry in regard to traditional forms of church life, and the freedom of reinterpreting them in the light of the new learning of their time. We may mensome of the leading representatives of this school of thought (it never was a party) Archbishop Whately, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Dr. F. D. Maurice, Dean Stanley and
tion, as
a party of modernists in the Church of England, embracing many of the Broad churchmen. It has not ceased to be a school of thought, rather than one of memory of the olden times and ways, but it is an
is
organized party, for purposes of offense and defense, like I that of the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parties. should say that it is the legitimate child of the Evangelical
party and the Broad church school. Its organization is called the Churchman s Union, For the past twelve years it has published a party organ called The Modem Church-
man.
It maintains a
Hall, Oxford. a Modern Churchman's Library. It thus for the first time organizes the liberals in the Church of England into
modem
a party, and proposes to use all the proper party tactics Thus far it has been free from the fairly and openly.
123
124
MODERiSTISM IN RELIGIOIT
bane of ecclesiastical Machiavellianism, to which the other parties have more or less succumbed. It has eminent Archdeacons, Deans, Canons, college professors on its board of governors. Of this party it was said in a recent number of The Churchman "In academic distinction it would indeed be hard to beat this gathering of able men. They comprise scholars of European distinction, deans and canons, head masters of the great public
:
historic uni-
the elder men, Dr. Rashdall, now Dean of Carlisle, and one of the first scholars of the day, is again crossing swords (after a twenty years' interval) with Bishop Gore,
Of
cannot see how the Dean's position with membership in the Anglican Church.
who
still
is
compatible
To
2.
and progressive character of the revelation given by the Holy Spirit in the spheres of knowledge and of conduct. To maintain the right and duty of the Church of England to restate her doctrines from time to time in
affirm the continuous
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
England. To defend the freedom and well work To promote the adaptation the church the the needs and knowledge To the a share the the claim the church. government and responsible work To cooperation and fellowship between the church England and other Christian churches. To study the application Christian and
of
of
accordance with this revelation. To uphold the historic comprehensiveness of the Church
of responsible students, clerical as research. of criticism as lay, in their services to of
times.
assert
of
laity to
larger of
in
foster
of
of
principles
ideals to the
life."
MODEEOTSM IN CHUECH OF
On
its first
ENGLAISTD 125
page The
two quotations: heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance." Erasmus. "A state without the means of change, is without the means of its conservation." Edmund Burke.
Modem Churchman prints these "By identifying the New learning with
learn about the teachings of this party through such books as that of the Rev. Dr. J. F. Bethune-Baker
One can
on "The Faith of the Apostles' Creed," Canon M. G. Glazebrook's "The Faith of a Modern Churchman," and that of various volumes by Dean Inge, the late Canon Freemantle, Professor Edwin Hatch, Professor Sanday and in a volume entitled "Foundations: A Statement of
Christian Belief in
Terms
of
Modem
Thought," by seven
This latter corresponds to the famous volume entitled "Lux Mundi" of the Anglo-Catholic party. All this literature, we might characterize as their Tracts for the Times, to use a title given by the early Anglo-Catholic party to their first publications. Taken as a whole, one can get from these volumes a fairly good understanding of the teachings of the modernists in the Church of Eng-
Oxford men.
land.
as bitter as that of partizanship in the field of politics, especially from the side of the Anglo-Catholic In presenting their case, however, I shall refer party.
chiefly to the papers given at their annual Conference in August of this year. ^Nearly all of these papers were on
cum
generally
it
the topic What think ye of Christ? Several of them were on the topic of Creeds. full report of them is to be found in The Modem Churchman for the month of
September, 1921. Modernists have been accused of not believing in the Incarnation and the Divinity of their Master. The most that can rightly be said is, that they do hold both of these
truths, but that they
126
MODEROTSM
11^
RELIGIOlSr
of Nicene Christology, nor do they hold them on the traditional ground of church authority. They reach them
way
by modem inductive and pragmatic methods and hold them on grounds of personal conviction. I think that this
a fair statement of their position. Let me give a review of some of the papers given at their recent Conferis
ence.
I quote freely, but shall try to do it accurately. In an editorial Dr. Major says that every fair-minded
reader will recognize the effort in all the papers to be constructive. note of affirmation runs through all the The radical views of Professor Christological papers.
Lake and Professor Foakes-Jackson were held to be his^ torically unjustifiable and psychologically inadequate. The old indiscriminate use of Scriptural proof texts was
of course repudiated. Who indeed, we may ask, should dare to use it ? As to the denial of the Divinity of Christ,
cannot be found in any of the papers, unless, I think, in that of Professor Lake. None of them found fault with the creed in its affirmation of Jesus' being of one Substance with the Father and as possessing both a himian and a
it
divine nature.
is
beheld
Deltas sub specie humanitatis, the Deity of Jesus being seen in his perfect humanity.
Again we note the absence of any appeal for credibility to the old view of miracles. How can any one, we may ask, appeal to an irruptionist, cataclysmic interference with nature, unless he does not believe in the divine immanence in nature, but only in an absentee God. Canon Glazebrook closes his paper thus: "(a) The records of our Lord's earthly life, and of his later manifestations to his disciples are fragmentary and mingled, with elements of legend. We desire to clear our thoughts about them, in order that we may have a reasoned assurance about that which is essential.
bf*
We
de-
MODEEmSM
sire to
IN CHUECH OF EITGLAITD
He is
sucli
;
127
and
to "under-
stand
more
means by mandment, example or demonstration. ^^(c) For all who call themselves Christians, The Person of Jesus Christ
is
fully both the content of His message, and the which it was delivered whether teaching, com-
a central fact.
If, therefore,
our
faith is to be a whole,
must bring
our religious beliefs, our rules of conduct, our hopes and aspirations and ideals, into relation with
all
that center.
"When we have
mood
to
tried to do this,
we
approach the mystery of His nature, the understanding of which would explain man's place in the universe, and the meaning of Christ's human life for each individual soul. Though we cannot look for a complete
understanding, we are confident that sincere and reverent effort will not altogether fail."
thus dismisses the apocalyptic view of Jesus, held by Professors Lake and Foakes-Jackson "Gloss this view as you will, it none the less makes Jesus
Professor
:
Emmet
a one-sided fanatic, a very commonplace and uninspiring The writer of another paper says: "The auprophet." thors of such a book as ^The Beginnings of Christianity,'
appear to reach what we may not unfairly term rejective conclusions by an atomic disintegration, which a physicist might envy." The conference quite rejected their hypothesis and snubbed Professor Lake, who spoke in a somewhat contemptuous vein about these modernists. He outclassed himself from their number. His view is that of Loisy, for holding which I think that the Roman Church was right in excommunicating him. Principal Major referring to this view says: "Jesus' conception of Himself is no more that of the Jewish Apocalyptists, than His conception of the Kingdom is
theirs.
He
He
fills
them with a
128
MODEROTSM
content."
m EELIGION^
upon
new
I say elsewhere, it is a question between such a Jesus and the disciples who understood Him so
that they put their Jewish apocalyptic clothing
As
little
of Professor
Emmet
of
and of the Dean of Carlisle (Dr. Eashdall) were the outstanding features of the Conference and have raised the
have seen how Professor Emmet dismissed the Lake and Loisy theory that Jesus adopted the role of a Jewish Messiah. Professor Emmet's paper was on the topic, "What do we know of Jesus ?" Taking the Gospel narratives and other New Testament writings, together with what he calls "the impact made by Jesus on His age, and the result of that impact in a school, a movement, or a church," he asks "what general impression of Jesus can we gather from these twofold sources ? What kind of a person does He seem to have been ?" He takes
loudest criticism.
for granted the general acceptance of the reality of Christ's humanity. That indeed is the fundamental position of all
traditional conception of Christ reads the Christ of Nicea back into the earthly career of Jesus.
We
modernists.
The
obviously wrong. The problem, I should say, is how to read the Gospels forward into the Nicene Creed, to see how far they justify its statements.
That
is
Professor
Emmet
says
we
overwhelming personality. St. Mark's Gospel is a thrilling drama, in which popularity and hostility play in the foreground. "Wherever Jesus appeared, these burst into
flame.
He
dously."
attracted tremendously or repelled tremenJesus on earth was certainly one who counted
and made things different wherever He went. All of His wonderful works of healing and His insight and intuitions are easily believable from our present knowledge of psychotherapy and the new psychology. They show the power of
a perfect humanity.
MODERNISM IN CHUECH OF
Then
is
EISTGLAISTD
129
the method of self-revelation which Jesus adopts not that of dogmatic self-assertion. The Gospels show
man who was much more concerned with His message than with Himself; a man who was self-imparting and
us a
simply that of one doing good and preaching ahout the Kingdom. His disciples soon found themselves compelled to describe Him by the highest term they knew, and that something more than a teacher. Emnot self-centered. It
is
phasis is put upon the attractiveness of his personality; the harmonious charm of His character; the absence of any sense of sin or need of forgiveness "the presence of
a personality which impresses and grips them." The personal fascination which He exercised on His contemporaries
has renewed
itself
it
been enthralled by
present
from age to age. Modernists have and therefore think the best way to
showing the perfect human person that lies back of the Gospel narratives. They note His immediate and unbroken consciousness of God, as Father. Practically He calls God Father and nothing else, and never calls him Jehovah or King. And clearly it was His aim to pass this new conception on to
to this age, is that of
Him
teachings. Throughout all the papers we find proclaimed the overwhelming personality of this man
others in
His
of Galilee.
sweet reasonableness
severity, the dignity and the the holding in restraint the terrible
all this
im-
pressed His disciples. Only once did any one dare to pity, and only twice to offer Him advice. That of Peter He met
with a withering look and the word of rebuke, "Get thee behind me, satan.'' He was full of gentleness and sympathy for the sick, the sorrowful, and the sinner. He fondled
little
humble people in
their
homes.
He enagonized in the garden of Gethsemane. dured shameful, spiteful treatment and finally His great
He
130
MODEROTSM
O
It touches.
m EELIGIOIT
wondrous
love,
who can
resist
can speak to the heart of man, The man of deepest that have never uttered a groan." This has been joy, He touches us as the man of sorrows.
lips
"No
the vital teaching, the winning teaching, in all traditional forms of Christianity. Modernists seek but to renew it
again.
giving.
"His whole
life
He left no
code,
not the
is it
way
that Jesus is
Rather
is
not in a
way
that
Is
it
not true,
all
modern-
the best
way
to get
men
to
come
and cling to Him, till they are ready to cleave to Him as God, through peril, toil and pain ? I think so. Then we must remember as Matthew Arnold said, "Jesus was above the heads of his reporters." Jesus was the Messiah. He also believed that He must die to achieve the redemption of mankind into the Kingdom of God on His call was not to seek honor but to give service. earth. But He went on to the end doing the will of the Father who had sent Him. Professor Bethune-Baker says that "to put it personally, I should say that what my faith in the God-head of Jesus means to me is that I believe that in getting to know Him, I get to know God; that what He does for me, the at-one-ment of which He makes me conscious is a divine work. Never does He cease to be a man for me. He becomes for me merged, as it were in God, or identical with
God.
Him
He
is
I say that the man Jesus is God, I mean that for me, the index of my conception of God." This is
When
something more than Ritschlianism. Dean Rashdall tries to tell what modernists mean by the Divinity of Christ and starts with some negative propositions: (1) "Jesus did not claim Divinity for Himself";
like but
131
(2) "Jesus was, in the fullest sense, a man." When a Sunday School teacher asks his class who was Jesus, and
tries to elicit the
answer "God," without the important addition "and man" he is teaching the ApoUinarian heresy. The fiction is kept up that Jesus was man but not a man
but God, eviscerating the Gospels of the human touch, which for men is the touch divine. (3) "It is equally unorthodox to suppose that the human soul of Jesus preexisted." (4) "The Divinity of Christ does not neces-
imply the Virgin Birth or any other miracle." (5) "The Divinity of Christ does not imply omniscience." Defending these propositions, he goes on with the constructive side. He construes the Incarnation on the conception of a kinship between God and man that is often un-orthodoxly denied. Human and divine are not mutually exclusive terms. There is a certain community of nature between them. Man is made in the image and likeness of God and so God can talk with him, can become fully insarily
carnate in him.
"That we are
justified in thinking of
God
as like Christ;
and teaching of Christ contain the fullest disclosure both of the character of God Himself and of His will for man that is, so far as the momentous truth can be summed up in a few words, the true meaning for
that the character
us of the doctrine of Christ's Divinity." He follows this sure knowledge, with a discussion of the terms Word (Logos) y and person, as used in Nicene Christology, that can interest only the few who are acquainted with the
subjects. Traditionalists who speak of the Trinity as three distinct minds, or centers of consciousness and deny that
one mind, are the real heretics, from the Nicene standpoint. The framers of the Nicene creed would have denounced them as Tritheists pure and simple.
is
God
of the Nicene Fathers helps ub to "see in their fully developed doctrine of the Person of
132
MODEKNISM IN EELIGION
Christ, the expression, in the language of a bye-gone phiand, I believe, always will losophy, of that which still is
be
the
and
central truth of Christianity, viz., that in the life character, the teaching and the personality of Jesus
God."
well ask ourselves, should we continue to teach the Divinity of Christ in a language not
But why
then,
we may
understood by even educated people? Why not begin with the impression Jesus makes upon us and live with that till we see His divinity full-orbed and unobscured by
His perfect humanity. That is the way the disciples learned it not by any dogmatic teaching from Him, but by their living with Him. Verily I believe that if we can
get
men
slow to recognize His divinity. And that is the practical reason why modernists insist so strenuously on the genuine humanity of Jesus. They feel that the best work to be
of bringing present-day men and women face to face with the Jesus of history, in place of the Christ of dogmatic theology. That does not appeal to
done
is
in the
way
them. Why not give them what does appeal to them touch and win them? Traditional teaching surely obscures this vision of His face and mars it with metaphysical theories that are no longer understood and leave men
with a Jesus who does not touch them, because He is not given the human touch. I cannot so preach Jesus. I want to win souls for the kingdom's service. I preach the cross
of Jesus, the mightiest of all human touches to win men to take up their cross and follow Him and thereby to be saved
by
Him
the
salva-
tion of getting more of the heart and the Master into their daily lives and work.
mind
of the
recur again to the paper of Dean Rashdall. Heresy hunters were soon on his trail and some of them
But
let
me
MODERmSM
demanded
IN CHUECH OF
EISTGLA^N^D
133
his deposition from the ministry. In reply the Bishop of Carlisle published the following statement:
"I have received many letters not, I am glad to say, from within the diocese ^inviting me either to prosecute the Dean I of Carlisle or at once 'to condemn his paper as heretical. have read the paper carefully, and can find nothing in it which amounts to a denial of any article of the Creed. So far from being a denial of the Divinity of our Lord, it is an attempt at once to explain that doctrine and to establish it. Whether the attempt is successful or not is a question on which opinions may reasonably and even violently differ, and there are statements upon matters of Biblical criticism within the
readers seem incompatible with the conclusions reached. But I hope that, before forming a final judgment, those who are interested in Dr. EashdalFs
paper which
may
to
many
opinions will at least read the sermon which he published subsequently to the Conference.''
I regret that I have not seen the sermon referred to. It is said to have greatly dampened the ardor of the heresy hunters. In any event it is a hunt for the Bishop as well
as for his Dean.
Dr. Bethune-Baker, Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, read a paper on "Jesus as both
human and
divine."
He
says:
"All Christian doctrine grows out of the puzzlement felt by the first generation of Christians. They knew He was a
man
God
life,
He was
on the
man was an
was human, we believe He was also divine." Try first to find out what He was as a man, that we may better realize that He was divine. "I do not for a moment suppose that Jesus ever thought of Himself
that
"We know
He
134
as God."
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
He
That would really be to dis-incamate Himself. was also divine, was the best interpretation that
That
could give of the impact, the impression he made upon them. So too it is ours. That is the key-note in his volume on ''The Faith of the Apostles' Creed." As to this impression of what Jesus was, he, in common with most modernists does not quote St. John's
Gospel, as the testimony of an eye witness, as its date and authorship are still an open question. The evidence seems
to point towards considering it as the work of another disciple in the early part of the second century. The Professor then quotes this paragraph from that devout Roman
Him
... is declared to hold in His human mind and will as much of God, of God pure, as human nature, at its best and when most completely supernaturalized, can be made by God to hold, whilst remaining genuine human nature still.
''Jesus
yet this same Jesus (though in this supreme heightened sense the Christ) remains thus also truly Jesus that is, a
And
bound to a human body, to history and institutions, to succession, can thus be our Master and our Model,
will
"That," says Professor Bethune-Baker, "is a statement of one of the finest and most Christian minds of to-day. I find the conception of the Incarnation expressed in it essentially in harmony with the line of thought I have been following in this paper, and have expressed in other words in my little book, 'The Faith of the Apostles' Creed.' " ^ This volume should be read by those wishing to know how a university Professor of Divinity regards each clause
of the Apostles' Creed.
*
He
tries to disentangle
and retain
135
the religious and spiritual value that each clause had at the time when formed. This he admits, rules out the acceptance of the literal clothing and trappings of an age with
a world-view very different from that of ours. He holds each article "neither according to its literal construction,
nor according to
construction, but according to Thus some of the clauses beits religious construction." come symbolical, as ''He ascended into Heaven and sitteth
its legal
at the right
hand of God."
is
mode
is
of treatment
it
the one that was generally used by the modernists in the Roman church.^
The later papers at the Conference were on Creeds. The general sentiment of these papers might be thus exLet us not by any creeds set bounds to God's The need of a creed and the value and proper use of the two creeds, as the best available at present were maintained. They are still living, but like old trees, carry
pressed. horizon.
We
know how
antecedents, one writer said, "It seems high time for us to abandon the traditional policy of uncritical veneration
and go back to the more primitive habit of constructing a new creed, whenever the situation appears to demand it."
But
It is expressed. No new creed could serve the purpose. best to retain the old ones, though "no reasonable man could accept them, except as statements historically valu-
able and
intellectual
development
of Christianity."
as Shibboleths.
The Fathers
*
term Roman, though I know that American Catholics because Rome still rules the Catholic church in America, it, and has silenced the movement of Americanism which was removing that stigma from it.
I use the
object to
136
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
believe."
tried to express the general view of the church, enclosed in a general formula for the learned. Our modern version of "I believe" indicates an individual-
"We
They
Complete personal acquiescence is never expected in case of the general formula of any other institution or society, not even to our Constitution of the United States, with all its amendments. That would be psychologically impossible. And yet all Americans sweai by it, though sometimes swearing at some of its clauses. So too, while many will have respect for the creed as a whole, they are very likely to make mental reservations as to some of its clauses. The public use of a creed should therefore be in the general and historic sense of it as a
existing.
whole.
Professor Percy Gardner thinks that a creed should "be taken rather in a literary than in dogmatic form." All
should be taken in the historical spirit and in a general rather than in an individual form. Sooner or later we shall have to reformulate our faith with a different
think that
it
emphasis.
Another one asks "Would not a confession of personal devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, as the supreme revealer of the Love of God, and as the Saviour of the world, suf:
the personal confession of those seeking admission into the church, provided they had been so instructed as to know what that
fice?"
it
I think that
should
suffice for
Another one suggested this form: "I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son and in His Holy Spirit," adding that "that was enough for St. Paul and St. John; and above all, it was enough for our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ." Later, a member of The Union thinks that any new statement should include belief in God's purpose for us and our work. Such a statement could and should be drawn up, as follows:
involved.
137
with love far-brought From out our storied past, and used Within the present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought/'
. .
and should at least include the following Christian affirmation "That inasmuch as the real test of our Christianity is that our daily conduct shall harmonize with the will of
:
God, as declared by Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we therefore declare our intention of working together in a Christian spirit with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity: To improve and intensify our personal experience of God by the regular and faithful use of every means of
grace.
To
To
live in such a
way
that
men everywhere
Holy
Spirit,
shall be
Jesus.
who
will
lead us into
To promote harmonious relations with To seek that unity which shall make us
Jesus.
all
all
To promote effective Christianity in the endeavor to make the kingdoms of this world the Kingdom of our Lord
and of His Christ." The creeds were criticized as not being religious enough for not saying more of the love of God and of Jesus, and of the spiritual and practical life that glow throughout the New Testament. They do not include the more important parts of Christian belief, those which arise out of personal experience the keen hatred of sin, the desire
;
Here
the
is
God
another tentative form proposed "I believe in and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we are all
: :
138
MODEROTSM
m eeligio:n"
one family in Him. I trust Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and strive to obey Him in all things. I pray the Holy Spirit to guide me into all truth.'* The February number of The Modem Churchman had given eighteen replies to a questionnaire on creeds, sent out to members of the Churchmen s Union, Creeds are being either used formally, to-day, or not being used at all or Traditionalists are being discussed and evaluated anew. object to the latter as being sacrilegious. But it is being done and rightly done. So it may be both interesting and helpful to give some consideration to the various answers given to this question by representative modernists in the
''The only proper use of the existing Creeds, is as significant historical documents to be explained and commented
upon by
test;
Another qualified expositors at appropriate times." one thinks the proper use to be a devotional one and not as a
is
ripe
and over
Dr. Bethune-Baker, Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University, offers the following: "I believe in God, maker of all things visible and invisible in human life, And in Jesus Christ, His Son our Lord, God manifest in human life.
Crucified for us, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven. And in the Spirit of the Father and the Son: One holy
Catholic Church, one Baptism unto forgiveness of sins, one Eucharist, one fellowship of the Faithful ; And the life of the
world to come."
Another submits "that the whole idea of Credenda to be required of members of Christ's Church is foreign to the mind of Christ, and is in a different category from the 'faith' or moral act of trust which He sought to elicit from His followers. No church of the future, which insists on other conditions of discipleship than Christ Himself
MODEEOTSM IN CHUKCH OF
El^GLAOT)
139
asked for, will deserve tlie name of Catholic, adding that creeds should be cast in the form of hymns and sung, with the Te Deum as an alternative, in order to their devotional
use.
Paul (the Eev. Dr. Inge) says: "I should keep the Te Deum and drop the three creeds." English churchmen as a whole, excepting the members
of St.
The Dean
of the Anglo-Catholic party, long ago learned how to take their creedal conformity with an easy conscience and with
proper allowances.
And
way
Church in our country take the XXXIX Articles of the church, and are working to replace them with pre-reformation theology which they so fondly call catholic. We know that that is but a fond party delusion. There is no "the
catholic theology."
rather amusing to see that their way is just the that the Anglo-Catholics in the Protestant Episcopal
it is
to
make
the creeds
including the Athanasian creed with all its damnatory clauses. They put right belief before vital faith and loyalty to Jesus of the Gospels. This reminds
sacrosanct,
us of the story of the Englishman who was arguing with the American about everlasting punishment. The Ameri-
can ended the argument by exclaiming, "Well, all I can say is that Americans would never put up with it." Americans will not put up with any such type of creed Creeds must be historically interpreted conformity.
and evaluated; reinterpreted in the light of modern learning and modern conceptions, to make them vital Otherwise no modernized enough to command assent.
human
first
up with
it.
The Conference
created quite a public coramotion at because of the very inaccurate and sensational reports
made
in the daily newspapers, with glaring headlines about heresies at the Conference. It seems that some enemies
by
all
140
the
MODER;^riSM IN RELIGION
artifices
unscrupulous partisans. However, the commotion was quite toned down, when the full report of The party at all the papers was soon given to the public. least secured a hearing of its point of view concerning the
of
fundamental Christian doctrines of the incarnation and the divinity of Christ. After the publication of the papers no one was able to assert that either of these were denied. The most that could be said was that they showed an attempt at an historical interpretation and a modern reinterpretation.
22nd granted that the writers of the papers "were animated by a true religious spirit and were anxious to secure a reverent yet
for Sept.
free consideration of one of the basal elements of Christianity," in men's
and that the papers "show sympathy with what is minds at the present day, and are important for
all students of
modern Christology."
Bishop Gore, the chief theological protagonist of Modernism, who is aging into the ruts of hard set conservatism, feels greatly alarmed over the issues thus raised. However he has the grace to add these words to his criticism: "I have no doubt that those whose position I have tried to describe above, have so real a devotion to Christ that He has for them the value of God.'' Moreover he admits that they were given cause for over-emphasizing
the humanity of Christ, by the failure of traditionalists to
emphasize it sufficiently. The Bishop of Southwark deprecates any attempt "to discourage free and reverent discussion on the relationship between contemporary thought and the historic faith. A church which ignores contemporary thought rapidly loses those who are educated and fails to influence the civilization of its time. In the workshop as well as in the university the most thoughtful of the younger men and women
MODEEI^ISM IN CHUKCH OF
El^GLAlSTD
141
are sorely perplexed as to how they can reconcile the new There is intellectual outlook with the Christian faith.
thus again a real call for theologians of the church to reinterpret and to re-express its faith in such a way that
without the sacrifice of the faith it may make appeal to the hest thought of our time. Frequent attempts have heen made to do this. ^Lux Mundi^ was a notable example
:
but I think it is a real disadvantage that of late years they should have come mainly from the school of thought which
is
traditionally ^liberal' in its outlook." At least, the papers given at the Conference, have rediscussion.
awakened theological
Here
is
an attempt to
restate or to reinterpret the traditional creeds, so as to make them vital in their devotional effect. The men who
came back from the front and the army chaplains had seen how little traditional Christianity had to offer either the Tommies or their officers, that would comfort and inspire
them.
in the Furnace" gives one of the many utterances on this subject of the doubt and perplexity of
"The Church
many
Here
is
an
at-
Their attitude toward the traditionalists is not unlike that of Jesus towards the traditionalists of Judaism. And the attitude of the latter is always that of bitter enmity towards people disturbing the
old order
by venturing
to
The
dis-
cussion cannot fail to do good. And who or what is to finally decide ? Is the official church the magisterium, as
Rome? If so, will it accept the enlightenment of the new learning and so become a more vital means of forwarding the Kingdom of the Master on earth? And
it is
in
will not the general religious consciousness have quite a deciding voice in the matter? Has not the day passed, when Bishops in a provincial council can be taken as
142
MODEEXISM IN RELIGION"
constituting the magisterium in these matters of the forms of dogmas ? In this democratic age a further democratizside of the church is surely demanded.^ In writing about modernism in the Church of England, we should not omit some mention of a party of modernists
ing of the
official
It is
known
as that
I regret that I have information as to the size and the propaganda of this
Their organ is called The Interpreter. party. They are as thorough going modernists as those of the Churchmen s Union. But they move more on the lines of the
modernists in the church of Rome.
An
article in the
Interpreter for July, 1918, states their position. I need not even summarize this as it is quite like that of the Roman modernist as set forth in the following chapter.
love their church as a spiritual home, redolent of ancestral traditions; winsome in its customs and cult.
They
to be the followers of F.
D. Maurice
*The January number of The Hibhert Journal comes in time to refer to two articles on the subject. The first article gives a good historical account of the origin (1898), aims and growth of the modernistic movement in The Church of England. The second
by Principal Major, of Ripon Hall, Oxford, the theological training college of the modernistic party. He sharply and clearly refutes the charge brought against the party as being Unitarian. He says that "the modern churchman could not feel at home in an assembly for divine worship from which the worship of Jesus is
article is
definitely excluded." Certainly the central loyalty of these English modernists is that of loyalty to Jesus Christ to Jesus of the Synop-
tic Gospels and to His spirit, outlook and mission. Professor FoakesJackson applies to them a term, used in an opprobrious manner, that He I think may serve to distinguish the party from Unitarianism. that "its disciples want to substitute Jesuanity for Chrissays I believe that where one modern churchman could, with tianity." any show of truth, be called a Unitarian, there are thousands of good orthodox people who could rightly be accused of tri-theism. Moreover, in the former case it would not be the unitarianism of the Unitarians, but that of the worship of Jesus, as one in mind and heart and substance with the Father. Principal Major's object is to explain why modern churchmen are members of the Church of England and why they intend to remain so. I think that he states the case fairly and wins it.
MODEK:t^ISM IN
CHUKCH OF
ENGLA:t^D 143
in his idea of the church as above all things a family, Thej take authority to be a family atmosphere rather
than a paling.
the church.
They like the ethos of the older form of They reckon Dr. Figgis as at heart one with
primary rather than creeds, which are "but
them.
Life
is
a stammering attempt to utter the essentially ineffable apprehension of spiritual reality.'^ They maintain that
their
Catholicism
in a
is
"profoundly democratic."
It
has
crystallized
Catholic Union,
of
St.
new organization called The Liberal The Rev. ^N^. E. Egerton Swan, rector
Martin's-in-the-Fields, is the Chairman of this League. He is known to us as making an innovation in the way of saying the General Confession. Sometimes he
asks the congregation to join together in saying it in In a sermon preached before silence rather than orally.
test of
Churchmanship
Church must think out entirely afresh where lies the true center of her religion, and what is the sound test of legitimate membership. She may find them in the outlook and spirit of the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels or she may find them in a Creed, in a particular
fact is that the
;
"The
hierarchical organization or in a certain type of devotional observance. But she cannot find them in both these at
once.
If the
first is
formularies and Church institutions must be quite secondary in importance. They may still be of very high
value, but they are so, only in so far as they help to produce or maintain the outlook and spirit of Jesus. And it
is
a very plain matter of experience that the severest orthodoxy very often goes with a singular lack of these, while a
very high measure of this ^mind of Christ' is often found in the most unorthodox and most anti-ecclesiastical. For this reason we must simply make our choice between the
two standards:
it
If
144
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
the heart and essense of Christianity are the outlook and spirit of Jesus, then we must recognize as really of us, all
who show that they possess these and as not really of us, all who fail to do so, however heartily they may repeat
;
He
what exact sense do you accept this third ? "I would say that this must apply, too, to candidates for
?
in
Holy Orders.
are undertaking special responsibilities, and will have to ask themselves questions that would not apply to applicants for baptism and confirmation.
They indeed
them to ask themselves such questions. The most that the Church is entitled to demand from them is a general assent to her Creeds, and it would
it is
But
for
be better to ask only for a practical undertaking to use her forms of worship." I cannot speak intelligently of modernism in the Nonconformist Churches in England. It is very widespread and influential, but I know nothing about any organized parties of modernists among them.
MODEEmSM
m CHUKCH OF ENGLA:^D
APPENDIX
145
It has
ACHAPTEK
believe that
as yet no history, at least since tlie suppression of the Modernist movement in the Roman Catholic
Modernism,
It finds free
it is
widely spread in
all
churches.
and but
most
and methods are found eveiywhere. But I know of no organized party in any one of them. Commanding names and prominent theological seminaries might be mentioned. In the Episcopal church modernism is found among the High, Low and Broad churchmen. Modernism in this church is the legitimate child of the Broad and the Evangelical parties.
of them.
Its spirit
I think, is for the organization of a party of modernists in all of the churches, with party organs and propaganda. In the Episcopal church it might
call,
The present
has in the Church of England, i.e., that of the Protestant form of the Churchmen s Union, and that of the Liberal Catholic Union. Both would detake the two forms that
it
the two
main forms or parties now in it. I should certainly welcome the work done by the Anglo-Catholic party. It is needless to add that I should be heart and mind and soul with the work of the other party. Perhaps indeed the work done by the former party might be such as to make its richer heritage very tempting to many of the
other party, a bit poverty stricken in clothing and housing and nutriment.
146
MODEROTSM
call for
m EELIGI0:N'
openness and frankness of utterance and for forming modernist parties in all the churches seems to me to be an imperative one. Let us stand by our several
churches; accept their heritage and organize for ways to make them better servants of the Master in His mission in this twentieth century. Let theological seminaries that
are already suspected of being tainted with the heresy of modernism come out frankly as the promoters of modern-
ism in religion. I take it that it is neither unfair nor unkind to say that The Union Theological Seminary has done this in the Presbyterian church. Organize, and use
proper party methods, save, pray God, those of wily and unscrupulous politicians that are prone to come into use in any party organization. Publish a weekly and a
all
monthly organ
to set forth
of Christianity. Let us follow truth through the old into the new, "even though it leads over Niagara." To adopt a saying of Aris-
sed magis arnica, Veritas. Dear friend our church, but dearer friend truth as we see it. In the Episcopal church, the Anglo-Catholic party has sho^vn how much can be accomplished through organizatotle
Amicus
Plato,
tion for the propagation of the medieval view of Christianity. They have been in earnest in their work of
If modernists feel medievalizing a Protestant church. that they have a truer view of the Gospel as to the Person, work and mission of the Master, why should they not be
equally zealous in promulgating the good news to
their generation
?
men
of
failed to be the
reluc-
we have a
modem
many
Gospel-wistful people
way
to spread
MODEENISM
souls to Christ
m CHURCH OF EITGLAXD
14Y
In speaking of Modernism in America,^ we should not omit the mention of Liberal or Reform Judaism. That is a vigorous organized party in the Jewish church. It has flourished for nearly one hundred years. Though
by the orthodox party, it dwells safely in the ancestral home. The results of modem Biblical and historical criticism
bitterly criticized
are fully accepted in modifying their observance of the Law. The modem world-view leads them to a fresh interpretation of the old forms and dogmas and ceremonies. They are answering the questions how can a man of mod-
culture remain in an ancient institution; how can a modern heir of an old castle esteem it highly while realiz-
em
ing the necessity of a changed estimate of all its parts and also the need of many modern improvements? And the Jewish church has answered negatively the question
not cast these liberals out of the synagogue? l^o schism and no excommunication has occurred in the Jewish
shall
we
church,
heritage.
differing
common
"Communicate rather than secede" on the one hand is met with excommunicate not on the other hand. The Jewish Encyclopedia has a very good article on "Reform Judaism." Besides this, there is a scholarly volume on "The Reform Movement in Judaism" by Rev. Dr. David Phillipson and a most interesting volume on "Liberal Judaism" by Claude G. Montefiore from which one may
get full information about this vigorous modernistic party in the Jewish church.
CHAPTER X
MODERNISM IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
in the church of
Rome
is
now
making. gored to death by two Papal bulls in 1907, and all doors locked against its renascence by the required anti-modernist oath in 1909. The article on Modernism in the Catholic Encyclopedia gives a temperate account from its standpoint of the overt movement in the Roman Catholic Church. The Papal Encyclical condemned the movement as Modernism. That
though applied opprobriously to a complex of movements, all of which were inspired by
a desire to bring the traditional Christian belief and practice into closer and more vital relation with the intellectual
history in the
was a
felicitous designation,
views and the religious needs of the twentieth century. It was a clearly defined party, virile and outspoken and
aggressive.
Its leaders
The new
learning had broadened their required scholastic education. They saw with modem eyes through the prismatic
coloring of other ages. What they saw is well stated in a volume entitled, "The Programme of Modernism," a reply to the Encyclical of
Pius X. That is now published in English, and should be read by those desiring a knowledge of what the modernistic movement in the Roman Catholic church represented.
was written
England
The
protest against the deliberate attempt in the Encyclical to give the public a false and unfavorable representation of modernists, as dangerous foes and promoters
authors
first
of atheism.
beg pardon for their position but only set it forth fairly as the Encyclical does not. The church must accept the new learning or lose her power with the present generation. She must change as all living institutions do change.
impossible to impose religious experience on the modern mind in the same forms as were adapted to the
"It
is
utterly
have passed through long periods of anguish, as we have little by little come into sympathy with the culture of our own times."
different
medieval
mind."
"We
the critical method conscientiously to the Bible and church history, and accept its accredited results, as
They apply
fully as do Protestant scholars. They ask why should the church refuse to meet the needs of modem times?
Why
God in history in stop with scholasticism and Trent? the history of the church's development that is their fundamental apologetic. So they repudiate the charge of
made against them in the Encyclical. God in Yes! God in the human soul that id fundahistory. mental with this group of Italian modernists. They are deeply religious men incurably religious. They know
agnosticism
that "religion expresses itself in external garb." This garb is taken from the environment. Each new garb is best
Times suited to nourish the religious life of its times. change and garbs should change with them or become out-
clothing.
urges change and the relegating of former garb to a merely relative position. They wage no war against the cult of
the catholic church.
In the primal immediacy of their religious life in their appeal to conscience and to the right of accepting all the
;
150
trutli of the
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
new
learning, they are practically Protestants. But they can protest only within their church, and that only so long as the official church permits them to do so. And that church no longer permits this. Hence the move-
ment
locuta
is
killed
and
est.
Rome
Roma
?
has spoken in two Encyclicals. 1st. The Encyclical Pascendi, abili, July 3rd, 1907: 2nd. Sept. 8th, 1907. 1st. The Decree Lament ahili. This decree begins with
a lament over the errors of her people who are following "what is new in such a way as to reject the legacy, as it
were, of the
human
race."
The
against which
I mention only a few of them. The full text of both Encyclicals should be read, as they are published in English.
Higher Criticism.
It pro-
tests against any Protestant interpretation of the Bible. It insists upon the magisterium of the catholic
Roman
church to define the sense of the Sacred Scriptures, thus leaving only a church-hound Bible. Another error of modernists is their holding dogmas to be merely the interpretation of religious facts by the hu-
mind, thus stating truth relatively to the culture of different ages. Another error is the following: "For the origin of the sacraments we must look to critical historians, rather than to ecclesiastical ones." Error 46 "In the primitive church the conception of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the church did not exist." Error 49 "The Christian supper gradually assuming the nature of a liturgical action, those who were wont to pre:
:
man
side
at the
Error 53
is
Error 55 Simon subject to perpetual evolution." Peter never even suspected that the primacy in the church
:
^'
was entrusted to him by Christ.'' Error 56 ^'The Roman church became the head of all the churches, not through
:
the ordinance of divine Providence, but through merely Error 62 ^^The chief articles of political conditions."
:
the Apostolic Symbol (creed) had not for Christians of the first ages, the same sense that they have for the Christians of our time."
requires a remodelling of the conceptions of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the person of
redemption." The sixty-five errors formulated by the Encyclical, contain more misrepresentation than of truth as to these modernists.
the incarnate
Word and
2nd.
increase
clerical
The Encyclical Pascendi. This also laments the of modernistic poison among the faithful, both
and
lay, as "present in the
very veins and heart of the church." Abusing roundly these modernists it proceeds to give an analysis of modernist teaching. Modernists are agnostics in philosophy and atheistic in both science and history. This is false and a libel on them. "The positive side of their teaching consists in
what they call vital immanence." Modernists teach that dogmas arise from man's thinking upon his religious experience.
hicles.
They
As
are either symbols or instruments or vesuch they must be changed as man's religious
experience changes.
Evolution of dogma
is
one of the
really re-
Then they
duce religion to the personal experience of the individual, thus "falling into the views of Protestants and pseudomystics."
beliefs subject to
152
MODERISTISM IN EELIGION"
science or criticism, thus inverting the catholic view of science as only the servant of faith and not its teacher.
state
own
longer be queen and mistress. What the Syllabus says about this shows the abiding desire and unyielding determination to regain
domination of the church over the state. For that she constantly works in wise and in wily ways in all countries. She is an astute politician and state politicians may well beware of ecclesiastical politicians in all democratic countries. The ecclesiastical Trojan horse bearing gifts may contain things to be feared to-day in all
ecclesiastical
countries.
thankful
Roman catholic religion is something to be for, but Roman catholic ecclesiasticism aiming
at autocratic domination is to be fought as an enemy by all good citizens. Bless the catholics for the religious life they nurture in our citizens. Anathematize their efforts at ecclesiastical world power. The mad Kaiser Wilhelm was no greater foe to the freedom of nations than is the
what they have stigmatized as Americanisme a forerunner of and soon merging into modernism in the Roman Catholic Church in this country. This Encyclical also condemns the use of the conception of evolution.
syllabus then mistates the principles of criticism and denounces literary and historical
The
modem
them
as
applied to Bible and church. Modernists "as reformers are to be condemned for wishing a reform in philosophy in ecclesiastical seminaries,
relegating scholastic philosophy to the history of obsolete systems." "Regarding worship they say, the number of
external devotions
taken to
and steps must be prevent their further increase." Again they adis
to be reduced
adorns it in the eyes of the public." Modernists demand that "a share in ecclesiastical government should be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity." "And now with our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no one will be surprised that we should define it as the synthesis of all heresies."
v^
modernism, the syllabus finds it to be "pride and ignorance" Part III of this Encyclical proposes remedies antidotes to the poison of modernism, and inoculation that will make future catholic scholars and students immune. Among the remedies none is more calculated to prevent
to the cause of
As
modernism among the clergy of the future, than the care to isolate her theological students from modern world-culture. Rome has always been an acute psycholShe knows the power of early ogist of the older type. training to give indelible color and to stamp fijxed ideas
any
taint of
prejudgments that will make zealots against new ones. Give her the training of a child for the first ^yq years and the man will remain a catholic. Give her the training of theological students and I am sure that we shall have few
modernists does train
insistently, persistently. rent of her own belief turned into the
among her
And how
she
tor-
mind
of the young,
and dams out any counter floods. She is a wonderful pedagogue in leading the young into her own traditional views. !No other church can compare with her in this. She learned her pedagogy from Plato's Republic. The This applies first remedy proposed is one of inoculation. to professors and students "We will and strictly ordain
:
made
Far
better
would
it
Roman
theology
if
154
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
she had held to Plato as in earlier centuries, when she anathematized Aristotle. Now she canonizes him. Dante
(Div. Com, Inf, IV. 191) gives the medieval place of honor assigned to him, ^Hl Maestro di colori die sanno''
The church changed from Plato to Aristotle as the master of intellectual men. But she took chiefly the barren part of Aristotle. The Syllor
who know.
bus then passes the steam roller of scholasticism over all professors and directors, who must in turn pass it over their students. In the Encyclical Letter of 1906 we read : "Let not young clergy be permitted to frequent public universities, except for very weighty reasons and with the
greatest precaution on the part of the Bishops. bid the pupils in seminaries to read newspapers
riodicals,
We
for-
and pe-
with the exception of some one periodical of sound principles which the Bishop may judge convenient to be studied by the pupils." In the same Letter we read also the following: "Any mode of dealing with the people to the detriment of priestly dignity, of ecclesiastical duties and discipline, can only be severely condemned." The Syllables, referring to works
of modernists, says "No books or periodicals whatever of this kind are to be permitted to seminarists or university students." Then the steam roller is passed over the edi:
tors of papers and periodicals Then "In the future. Bishops shall not permit congresses of priests, except on very
:
rare occasions."
extirpate errors we have the following: "We decree therefore, that in every diocese a council of this kind, which we are pleased to name 'the Council of Vigilantes,' be in-
To
These are to act secretly and inquisitorially and "take all prudent and prompt and efficastituted without delay."
cious measures."
is
what we
Conclusion: "This, venerable Brethren, have thought to be our duty to write you for
who
believe."
What
a despotic ecclesi-
machine is here laid bare! We may thank the modernists, if they have done nothing more, for having called out such a statement for the eye of the general public. So far removed is it all from
thought that the public will not even give it a hearing. Perfect submission to such decrees would surely
modem
produce a race of
that of the
Ecclesiastically
men
as isolated
from modern
in Thibet.
culture, as
how
inimical
Rome is a wise pedagogue. We know Rome is to the public schools and colleges
She wants only church schools from the kindergarten up through the university. She wants loyal,
in this country. zealous children; servilely trained children who will be persistently subject to present ecclesiastical authority.
That
first,
and patriotic
citizens
her autocratically trained members can be patriotic citizens of a democratic country. None can doubt the loyalty and patriotism of our catholic brethren in the great war.
The Knights of Columbus were chivalrous knights of democracy. But then catholics in this country breathe our modern air. The steam roller of the ecclesiastical machine
has not yet done its work. But here comes a question for Protestants to consider: How shall their children get a religious education? Another question is. How can a state afford to neglect the
know that it religious culture of its coming citizens ? is the disposition of the citizens that guarantees the observance of its laws, and that religion is the foremost factor
in creating the loyal disposition. Merely secular education may make "frightful Huns" of the next generation of our citizens. Mere secular culture may turn out clever
rascals
We
must
The
156
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
ish spirit from getting tlie upper hand in the lives of citizens. Protestants must either return to the old habit of
home-training of children in religion, supplemented by that of church-training, or insist that religion and ethics must be made an important part of the education given in
the public schools. They think that they do not have time for the former, and they are too weak to demand the
latter.
Shall they then take their children out of the public I think that schools and send them to church schools? the catholics are entirely right in recognizing (1) the mighty force of religion in human life and (2) in recognizing that the religious disposition should be cultivated,
as
it
can best
that in some
way
their
children receive religious instruction and nurture. Either give it to them themselves, or insist that the public schools
help in the work. Let them not l)e frightened by the bugbear cry against sectarian teaching in our public schools: or let them return to the Roman Catholic method of church
schools.
There
is
much
ter way.
But we must
way.
And
Roman
catholics
do in religion and its power in life, they would either follow their method or they would put up a strong
fact is patent, that the children of Protestants are not getting their due in this matter. It is also a fact,
The
that the state cannot afford to have its citizens either non-
Let Protestants urge their rightreligious or irreligious. ful demand for religious instruction in our public schools. I have forborne to quote the harsh charges and mean
two Encyclicals^ against the modernists. These, taken with the direct charges, which are generally misrepresentations of their views and purposes,
insinuations
in the
made
He is monster of the type the Holy Father describes. a nightmare creature with the voice of a lamb, the tail of a and fox, the jaw of a wolf, and the wings of a seraph though he is a compound of all errors, you can accuse him of no vice he is neither drunken, nor lewd nor
.
slothful."
notice of a further
plied by Rome to all of her clergy, in order to of the poison of modernism. Soon after the issuing of the
last Encyclical, there
was
sent out
what
:
is
known
The
Anti-Modernistic Oath, to be taken by all of her clergy. The opening clause is as follows "I accept and firmly
embrace everything that has been defined by the unerring Magisterium of the church; whatever has been declared and promulgated, especialy those doctrines which are directed against present day errors." The following is a summary of the rest of this oath. Miracles and prophecy
must be accepted as the sure signs of the Christian reThe church of St. Peter must be accepted as the ligion. custodian and teacher of the Bible. The heretical dictum of the evolution of dogmas must be renounced. The oath ends thus "So I promise so I swear." From the psychological standpoint, no better remedies could have been taken to expurgate modernism from the minds of all the members of that church. If the educational system of Germany, under the strong hand of the Kaiser could, in fifty years, change the mind and Gemuth of the German people from being people of culture, in the largest and finest sense of the word, to being a people devoted to the barbarisms of Kultur the culture of physical force we may well fear that Rome may purge out modern thought from the minds of her people and fill them still more with medievalism and undemocratic ideals. By the
:
158
MODERmSM
IN RELIGION
was taken with few
ex-
ceptions by Rome's priests throughout the world. Many took it with a caveat and with violent protestations against it It is pitiful to read many of their bitter outcries
against what they were compelled to take. Their mother church, on its official side, treated them like a cruel step-
mother.
Roma locuta est, and that rightly from her official standAnd her modernists submitted, and that also point. Let me in justice to both rightly, from their standpoint.
parties elaborate this statement.
Rome spoke rightly from her o'^ti standpoint. The genius of Rome is to rule. As Virgil said of old Rome, so the Roman Catholic Church still says it and believes it The old Roman religion was aristocratic. The to-day.
a.
Christian religion soon became the same in its organizaAs such Rome saved the church tion for government.
from
the anarchy that the Gnostics, Montanists and other wild Christian sectaries would have worked.
from the third to the thirteenth century to preserve and propagate Christianity, ought to be a commonplace fact of history which too many Protestants are prone to forget. Law, order, and authority! These she gave and used in times of need. But authority loves authority even when its work is done, and new times and conditions need modification in form and methods. That Rome has not learned. In modern times and in democratic That being her standpoint, countries, she changes not. we may concede that she was justified in silencing her moddid,
ernists.
What Rome
But Rome spoke wrongly in her violent attacks upon modern Biblical criticism and the historical method upon the new learning in general and upon democracy as against
;
autocracy in a way that should be a warning to all the Protestant churches. Her fight against all these is as futile
159
as that of Xerxes, Canute or Mrs. Partington against ocean's tides. The critical, the historical and the scientific
methods are the three dynamic forces in the world's intellectual progress. Only at its own peril any Canute Pope or any official church organization can say to them: "thus far and no farther.'' The Poman Modernists, too, were right from their standpoint, in submitting to Pome's decrees. Their standpoint was, that Pome was the true and only church, and that she was their mother. This is a striking note in the attitude of these moderna persecuting church. It is that of love for and loyalty to mother church. They are unfaltering in their devotion. They kiss the
ists to
as a loyal son will not disown the parent that unkindly and unjustly chastises
filial rights.
CHAPTEK XI
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND THE PROTESTANT
CONSCIENCE
Roman
harsh decrees of the ruler Romans. They THESE the mother element ofof the church too much loved
their
to
commit the
sin of schism.
Protestants
may wonder
at
their attitude to a persecuting church. should realize that they had lived, moved, and had their being in a Roman catholic atmosphere very different from and much
We
They had
a mentality and a morality and a religiosity different from ours. The mother apron strings still held them.
It is very difficult for a Romanist to have an appreciative understanding of the religion of Protestants, and equally hard for Protestants to have the same for the
religion of
Roman
catholics.
latter.
give
on
goal unless Protestantism runs entirely out of religion and further into mere intellectualism (orthodoxy or heterodoxy) where
religion perishes; or into societies for ethical culture and social uplift, which, vital as they are, cannot keep their
vitality apart
my
"Great God. I'd rather be a pagan worn," than to be without some form of embodiment for
the preservation and propagation of the real and distinctively religioiLS spirit.
161
make
a synthesis between the results of any critical drive me, as they often have, from what I con-
as
Lord
so, as
Jesus, lover of
my
soul ?'
Jesus, Saviour of
my
soulP'
I
1.
am
incurably religious and Christian. (a) The ethos, the environing, communal tissue
is
very different for the born and bred Roman catholic from that of the bom and bred Protestant. It is more
distinctively religious for Roman catholics than for Protestants to-day. From cradle to grave the Roman catholic
enveloped in this religious atmosphere pagan as much of it is and nourished and dyed, stamped, prejudiced by
is
it
kept an
There
is
infant,
we may
But
it
say, kept
is all
tively religions.
atmosphere, a thinner, a less obvious and persistent, and in our day, a less conscious objective ethos for the Protestant. The truly reless of this religious
ligious family atmosphere; the pious home with its pious customs how rare to-day that is, among us Protestants.
It
thank God, when I was a child in a Presbyterian home. The reReligion was the chief concern. ligious atmosphere was persistent even if a bit too much
was not
so,
How
we
There
is also less
the Protestant.
She teaches objectively keeps it up too long, we think. through folk-lore, fable, legends, and through pictured religion in cult, and symbolism in dogma. Religion is
162
MODERN^ISM
1:^-
EELIGION
It
more akin
to esthetics tlian to
philosophy or science.
on poetry than prose. Imagination rather than the critical understanding nourishes it. The Protestant is too apt to get the religion of the mere understandHe gets dogma, intellectual schemes or "plans of ing. salvation" or orthodoxy, which has been the bane of Protestantism from its beginning. Rome has all that in her scholasticism, Tyrrell thought that to be the bane of
thrives better
Catholicism.
that for
all
its clergy.
It is
her intellectual
sterile
If that were
as is the
she would be as
and moribund
the East, or any Protestant church in which orthodoxy is still regnant. Of symbols, of sentiment, of pictured reLiteralism nowise ligion. Protestantism has too little.
nurtures: neither does the spirit without the letter long continue to do so. The spirit in the letter, in the signs and
symbols, in festival and song, that
incarnate.
is
the
way
of the spirit
His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him." There is more of the spirit of reverence, of devotion; more detachment from things secular,
is
"The Lord
in
including dogmatics, in Roman catholic churches than in many Protestant churches. The people, rich and poor side
by
Back
to Jesus, through
how-
intermediaries, it is always back to, and adoring Jesus. Protestants go to church, or used to, chiefly to hear the sermon too often a rehash of traditional doc-
ever
many
trines or of traditional churchmanship. Or the sermon has turned stigmatized as the chief Protestant Sacrament
into an essay or an ethical discourse. But these can be found, in better form, elsewhere. The fervor of old evangelical
not present in it to appeal to the emotions and to excite the truly religious spirit. The real
preaching
is
presence of Christ is not made to be felt deeply. When the Roman catholic enters his temple, the Real Presence
CATHOLICPEOTE ST A:N'T
is
CO:N'SCIE]SrCE 163
He adores a present present for him on the altar. Christ, in his superstitious way, we say, but he adores. Then the Virgin cult. Well, read F. W. Eobertson's
two sermons for the best Protestant view of the matter the maternal element in the parental idea of God. There is too much of the Jewish Jehovah element in most of our And till the conceptions of God the Father Almighty. femifuller and truer conception of the real humanity nine and masculine and the real divinity of Christ, reachieved through His earthly life of obedience and suffering and mission, till the presence of the real Jesus in heart and mind of Protestants is brought back in modern evangelical form in our churches, they will lack the element of
The
Roman
Without any
mon
analysis, let us take conscience in the comuse of the term, as the sense of oughtness, obligation,
man's psychical makeup, inherent and persistent in the lowest savage and the most civilized man. Let us grant that it may be bruised and stifled, perverted and distorted in its workings, still
loyalty.
Let us take
it
as a part of
its
voice
is
oughtest.
But what does it thunder ? What monologic, decalogic, myrialogic commands does it utter ? What are the specific oughts or whats to which it says, thou must? What are
the contents, the objective side of this subjective sense? It is not an individualist It is not evolved from within.
creation out of nothing. It is the product of one's enman is a man only vironing tissue from the cradle up. as a social animal.
TJnus
The
individual
is
a social
product at birth. He is bom into a family; into a social set; into a country with its ideals and institutions for making him a good citizen. All these receive him, en-
164
MODERNISM IN EELIGION
swathe him, prejudice him, form his pre-judgments. They nurture, perchance poison, his higher life; form the spiritual bath in which the crass lump of flesh and blood must be baptized in order to become a man. No man can escape these pre-judgments. Prejudiced he must be, whether pagan or Jew or Christian, or even atheist. My
membership in any and all of these institutions, prescribe what my ought commands me to do. Of course there is a gradation in the worth and authority
station in life,
my
of these institutions that often brings about a "conflict of duties." These nurturing institutions give the concrete
whats of his inner oughts.^ Among these none are more strenuous in emphasis, than those pre-judgments formed within the holy and tender web of human affections of family and church. The concrete conscience of man is an educated conscience and has a history. Where a mother church assumes most of the education, that church's rules become the highest "what" for the inner ''ought" If Rome, as we are disposed to grant, mothers her children more than do most of the Protestant churches, then her The church will ''whats'' will command stronger loyalty. be esteemed the highest "terrestrial God;" not merely a
specific
human institution, but the extension of the incarnation of God in this world. Duty, we see, runs through a series of duties. The highThat means for the Roman est of these is duty to God.
catholics,
duty to obey the voice of the church. When conflicts of duties arise, duty to the church gets the preeminence that it has already achieved through its motherly
education.
But the Protestant conscience has not been educated to this view of the visible church as the ultimate embodiment of the "what' for his "ought/'
Cf.
my
CATHOLICPKOTE ST A]^T
giver;
CO:N'SCIE:tTCE 165
though recognizing the weight of private judgment for the mature educated Christian, the Protestant
does acknowledge the authority of the Holy Scriptures and of the communal Christian consciousness.
But he does not recognize even these as giving the ultimate content for his sense of oughtness. He has a vision of the Kingdom of God on earth coming down from heaven, of which all external institutions are meant to be the ministrant servants.
Still nine-tenths of his
educated con-
of the conformist type. But times come when he feels that something is wrong ; that his recognized authoriscience
is
ties are
not doing their best for the advancement of this Kingdom of God. He becomes, conscientiously nine-tenths a non-conformist a reformer. God's service is perfect
freedom, and God's service can best be found in some reformation or transcendence of conventional forms. And this has been the dynamic of all moral and spiritual progress.
God in the soul of men, commanding them into better and betr
between the
To
Roman
catholic
:
and the Protestant conscience take the following story In a theological discussion with a friend, old Dr. Lyman
Beecher said
lead
:
if
only
it
does not
over Niagara." "Then," was the reply, "you are no follower of the truth. I will follow it if it does lead me
me
This might be taken as a discussion between a Roman catholic and a Protestant modernist today. "Over Niagara" for the one would mean, "out of the church." In that sense at least, the Protestant would go
over Niagara."
over Niagara, in following truth, and generally the Ro-
Whether
Roman
rightly or not there is a prevalent idea that catholic morality is more lax or flexible than that
of Protestantism.
Rome
and
166
MODEHmSM
IN EELIGIO:Nr
mortal sins. She has her pardons and absolutions. Penances help undo the sins. Her members need not be forever hounded by the terrors of the conscience-stricken. But take the Protestant conscience, the non-conformist, or
puritan, or
New England
The conscience-stricken man is dogged such palliatives. by the furies, as well portrayed in Hawthorne's Scarlet
Letter,
and no penance can undo his sin or overrule it Moral rigorism rides him to death. Fiat justitia mat coelum. His heaven falls into chaos without recreative power. With Kant he holds that under no conceivable circumstance is
it
ever right to tell a formal lie. Lie and your heavens fall. Take the formal lie of the physician to his patient (now recognized as psychologically the most
curative agent in his materia medica) ; take the formal lie which alone can save a friend from the sword of a mur-
derer
him from
the crime of
inward anti-nomianism.
tion in ethics.
Here
form
catholic ethics there is the speTheir fundaof the ethics of the Jesuits.
mental principle is that "the end justifies the means." This has been a fundamental principle in all rational ethics from Aristotle onward. Virtues as such, are means to
accomplishing the highest end.
But
as preserve or enhance its welfare, is with the Jesuits, the church is made the "terrestrial God," absolute ethics become relative. The Jesuits can, historically speaking, be rightly charged with what, for Protestants is a lie, though it be camouflaged with the cover of
to
167
expediency. Moreover, their doctrines of "moral probabilism'' leads directly to an easing the conscience, where moral
we must
Roman
more flexible, less tyrannical, perhaps a bit more humane than that of the Protestant. It is only where it faces relation to his church, that it takes on the inflexibility, the hardness, the inhumane features of the Protestant conscience. The whole subject is worthy of a more extended and a deeper analytic study in the theory
of ethics.
This helps to explain the catholic modernist's remaining in his church where the Protestant conscience would com-
mand him
And, up to the present day, there has been something of the same spirit in Protestant churches that would "put out" those who are unable to say their shibboleths literally. Excommunication and
to get out.
heresy trials have been for much less grave causes than in the church of Eome, and likewise secessions. There
and too little of the organic and home-like idea of the mutual relations between the church and its ministers and members. "Why don't you get out?" That is the way the Protestant conis
too
much
it to
then, in view of this catholic mother, this catholic mentality, this catholic conscience and their belief in
Can we
Eome
ernists
we blame
these
mod-
would have withdrawn into another fold, into a roomier one. Thus Dr. Charles A. Briggs withdrew from the Presbyterian and entered the Episcopal church, as being
168
MODERNISM IN EELIGION
all,
besides possessing a richer heritage of past Christian ages, than other Protestant churches. As long as this church remains a Protestant church she
can well afford to smile at the taunt of bitter denominationalism, in stigmatizing her as a "Botany Bay" church. That is a base slander. Some time she may take another from Protestantism to Modernism and bestep forward come the Modernist Episcopal Church, In closing it should be noted that what I may style the Episcopalian conscience cannot be rightly classed with either one of these two others. In the Church of England, "the non-conformist conscience" is rather a term of reproach than of repute. Till recently, both in the universities and in the church, creedal tests have been hard to The clergy of that church have been greatly overbear. burdened with creed subscription. But they learned to give this subscription with an easy conscience. They made allowances of many grains of salt They did not accept them in their literal sense. With a wry face and a twinkle
in the eye, they swallowed them whole, including the (to the most of them) unintelligible Athanasian creed, with
all
its
anathemas.
type of conscience.
to have a
true,
more
flexible
less de-
though in a
Too often, however, the modem Protestant withdraws from any form of the church. Better Rome than no
church Better Rome than Unitarianism, which would be a sterile home for the trained theologian who would cease to be that in giving up the Nicene Christology ; and a cold home for the devoutly religious soul. We may thank the
!
England orthodoxy had drifted. We esteem them for their fine culture, and their high ethical
into which
New
idealism.
appreciative of their minimum of Christ-worship. They are a power for righteousness among
We
are
CATHOLICPKOTE ST AISTT
COE"SCIE]SrCE 169
men. And to promote this was the Master^s mission. But Unitarianism does not nourish the distinctively religious life. There have been few Christian mystics in her fold. We remember with gratitude, Channing and Peabody and Martineau and some others in whom we and others have found inspiration for holy living. Yes, there have been some saints among the Unitarians. The author of "Nearer, My God, to Thee" was a Unitarian. But there are thovr
sands of sweet saintly mystics in the Roman catholic Unitarians may be weak on the specifically rechurch.
ligious side, but they are surely strong on the ethical side. With all their culture they have not gotten rid of the old-
thinking it all out as regards the individual's character and the becoming dignity of humanity, we must say that while the Roman catholic conscience seems to be a bit more humane, the
is
And
Protestant conscience
surely
more divine.
CHAPTEK
XII
Roman
of
THE
Father Tyrrell.
He
them all was the Jesuit was the most winsome, pathe-
tic
modernists.
Loisy was the scholar of the movement, erudite, academic, coldly critical. He lacks the glow of the mystic. I find nothing in all his books that wins the heart. He was excommunicated March 4th, 1908, and that rightly, I think. He seems to have been a bit disingenuous and an I opportunist in all his defense of the Roman church. have previously given an extended critical review of his books ^ and need not burden tliis book with further notice of them. I think that his excommunication was right for
the following reason. He explicitly denied any historical worth to the accounts of Christ's resurrection.
The miracle
St.
24.)
ethical miracles,
wrought
by the mighty power of a perfect human personality, as that ripened again into "the form of God" which he voluntarily laid aside when He was "made in the likeness of
man"
The power of this personality (Phil. ii. 6, 7). emptied the tomb and made intercourse with His disciples
again possible. His risen body was very different from the *"The Freedom of Authority," pp. 45-156.
170
FATHEK TYREELL
body laid in
tlie
AISTD
ABBE LOISY
171
tomb. His full excarnation had already begun. It continued through the forty days, till He returned to the Father. Most of His recorded miracles are
ethical ones.
sinless
personality.
We may
seeming
to be divorced
from
If we were left with goodness. those of the cursing of the ia.g tree, the demoniacs and swine, and the finding a piece of money in the mouth of
fish,
we might have
a paltry conception of
Jesus discouraged
was no such miracle worker. His life and teaching were the standing miracle. Through His wondrous personality He wrought works of unusual power for the help of men. We do not believe He wrought the others. Why should belief in them be required in this day when the old proof from miracles has been given up ? Who to-day craves
to-day, with the sense of law, order, unity and purpose in nature could believe them. Loisy first gave up the miracle of Christ's wondrous per-
He He
seeking such signs said that false Christs would arise and perform them.
men
such miracles
Who
sonality and so readily denied that of His resurrection. No fact in history is more sure than that of the firm belief of the disciples that they had seen and talked with
This gave them the Gospel of the resurOne may conrection, to preach as glad tidings to men. ceive of the resurrection, in different ways, but cannot deny
the risen Master.
that Christ
to his
made some sort of posthumous manifestations The church was surely built on the belief disciples.
Loisy makes the Gospel Narratives of the resurrection to have been the work of the subjective faith of the disciples. Their phantasy painted the Gospel stories about it. They raised Him from the dead and glorified Him. Better, we say, pure philosophical idealism than such subjec-
172
MODERNISM
IN"
EELIGI0:N'
men
Tyrrell was a deeply religious soul. Once he wrote to a friend, "I feel a far deeper fraternity and sympathy with any religious non-conformist (even with a Baptist minis-
than I do with Abbe Loisy." Read George Tyrrell's Letters, posthumously edited, and you will love him. Here
ter)
is
man and
He
thought as he fought and moved forward. Here we catch him in various moods, off guard, but always on duty. Here we find the saving grace of sparkling humor. Here
and depths of his mystical life in Irishman by birth and an Irishman in temperament, volatile and of a quick flash-in-the-pan temper, abounding in apothegms. His editor says: "In his nature was a curious blend of pugnacity and peacefulness: of reasonableness and perversity." He was truly human in his tenderness and sympathy. But what strikes us most forcibly in these letters is his fine spiritual insight, moral acumen, and psychological sagacity. The volume is a treasure; one of the volumes that one wants to keep on his private bookshelf. It abounds in ringing, stinging,
find the heights Christ. He was an
we
Only one will take with allowance sticking expressions. many things that he writes in the abandon of friendly
personal intercourse. He had not the vice of small minds
the fear
of contra-
dicting anything that he had ever said before. He dares To to let himself go freely on the spur of the moment. a friend whose dog had died, he wrote: "Poor Chough.
does he think of the EwigJceitf How hard it is to think of that boisterous affectionateness put out like a
What
farthing dip." He loved nature. "How do I know that flowers don't pray ? I am quite sure that they do." Here he voices Kilmer's feeling in his poem on Trees. As illustrating his sense of humor, take the following
:
"Could you
FATHEK TYKKELL
translate
still
A:NrD
ABBE LOIST
173
Tu
es Peirus,
You're a brick?"
While he was
a Jesuit he wrote, concerning the titles of his books "I suggested the title of The about to be published, Travails of an Irish Oentleman in Search of a Religion,
But my publishers did not see it, and thought my spelling was bad." To a lady friend who wrote to him about some
soul-aches, he replied "I think your soul-ache is a weather ache. And that is the real misery, that our souls are part and parcel of this earth machine."
:
told of a fellow priest's practising his sermon, gestures and all, he says, "The Methodist devil broke loose in me and got hold of tongue. And I said. Good God
When
my
fancy Jesus Christ, or Peter or Paul, or any man not sodden through with artificiality and untruthfulness, mincing before a mirror, pinking and pruning his peacock feathers, practising sighs and grimaces to cover his own hoUowness of heart and lack of faith." "Pulpit Rhetoric," he adds, "is the surest symptom of religious decadence and death." '^Religion has had so little to do with the shaping of the Creed the council of Nice seems to have been just as dis;
reputable a business as that of the Vatican; as purely political in its origin and issue. One is driven back always to the religion of Jesus and away from that about Jesus."
"God
in
?
what
sort of a church
have you longed for ? It seems to me that the Roman church (not the Papacy) presents the suggestion, ^the broken arcs' of a more perfect round than any other. A fragment by Phidias does more for sesthetic education than the work of his pigmy followers. There are treasures in every dust heap and perhaps the Roman dust heap is the biggest and richest of all." Tyrrell was a Christian mystic, with a practical turn. "I like to maintain the thesis that no one can love God truly and well, if he be not a mystic. In order to know God, man must be in living touch with God." He goes
sort of a church
But what
174
MODEROTSM IN EELIGIOIT
over the points of the Christian mystics' teaching and thinks them "profoundly right." The life of God, the life
of Christ in the soul of Tyrrell
religion. Till the last,
was his
real personal
he found that mystic life best nurtured in the church of Rome. But within that church he always distinguished between its official hierarchy with its scholastic dogmatics and the religious consciousness of the whole church of the faithful, and rested his hopes largely in the
and unlearned. "The kingdom of God was once at Jerusalem, then at Rome, but now is afloat, seeking a new, but not, perhaps, final embodiment. Meanwhile each may do the best by sticking to his special church and furthering things as best he can."
laity both learned
are fighting over papering their attic, while the basement is in flames." "I often thank God
"Our Bishops
was not
bom
vital truth of religion does not stand or fall with the Roman church. Science will assert its claims as long as
man has
a brain.
itself as
long as he
has a heart." "Christ was not vulgar in His poverty and simplicity; in the robes of Ca3sar He would have been vulgar. If Christ, or even Peter, came to earth to govern the church
do you believe for one moment that they would assume the Byzantine pomp of the Vatican, or claim temporal power." "Every day I feel more of a Catholic (not Roman) and more of a Quaker than ever." "The antinomy I wrestle with is that institutionalism or extemalism is at once essential and fatal to religion." "I would sooner
to-day,
see
to be with-
TATHEK TYEEELL
AOT3
ABBE LOISY
175
Tyrrell held that both schism and excommuiiicatioii were equally unchristian. "I hold every schism to have been a
on the part of those who were driven out and of those who drove them out that the English Church is a schism for which Rome was nine-tenths and England one-tenth
sin
:
responsible."
Against
interests,
official
its
vested
It was Tyrrell's opposition continually grew. He thought ultrathe non-religious side of the church.
montanism doomed.
great anxiety is without a complete rupture, enter into its heritage. Rome cares nothing for religion only for power: and for reShe feels that Modernism ligion as a source of power.
The
"Nothing can save it, thank God. whether the new Catholicism can,
is
merely religious; that it would sacrifice every remnant of her political power to the cause of religion." "If the church is to maintain her monarchic form and
live,
she must interpret that monarchy after the English democratic type not after the Russian autocratic one."
:
I've quoted little about his intellectual struggles and attainments. The latter were the general results of other
He
was not
At Baron Von Hiigel's suggestion, he began the study of German. But he knew nothing directly of the work of the German critical school. I should have quoted more about his distinction between
theology and that of the living and deeply religious life of his church. This latter he ever esteemed to be the true catholicity, only needing certain pruning
the
official
and modemizings, to make it the foremost, almost the final form for the religious life of the present day. Eor the last three years of his life, he was a soul-martyr of official Rome. Love him as a martyr we surely must. Through these years he endured persecutions severe, petty, mean, such as zealous churchmen know how to inflict in
176
MODEROTSM
m EELIGIOlSr
as cruel as
it
modern forms which are morally and spiritually the old form of burning at the stake.
As
cries out
and shackled by any ecclesiastical officialism as Tyrrell was by Rome, without saying an anathema and a vale to it.
But we
all,
as
we
love
him through
spiritual struggles, and finally for his answering devotion to Rome, in spite of her persecutions, because he believed her to be The
his doubts
Church,
Tyrrell was never formally excommunicated and never He was forbidden the sacraments. formally retracted.
He
died without receiving the Viaticum, though a friend, Abbe Bremond gave him the last absolution. He had
previously
made his confession to the Prior of Stonington, gave him the sacrament of extreme unction.
of the diocese refused the departed saint catholic funeral services and burial in a catholic cemetery.
catholic burial, unless retraction attested by a priest in writing," was the Bishop's refusal. It is pitiably sad all that his devoted friends tried to do for his remains,
desired.
"No
such parts as they could of the catholic funeral services and committed his remains to their final resting place in a non-catholic cemetery. Abbe Bremond made the address. "Catholic burial has been refused him by In it he said
:
our
will
make no
he
silence, as
would have told us to do. We wish for nothing that would suggest a schismatic or sectarian attitude, such as he abhorred. But we cannot let him be borne to the grave without prayers. And I, as his old and intimate friend, will say the last catholic prayers over his body, and will
bless the grave {i,e., sprinkle holy
water upon
it)
in the
177
of the
he
is
to
On
That was on July 21st, 1909. January 1st of the same year, Father Tyrrell had
lie.''
written the following: "If I decline the ministrations of a Roman catholic priest at my death-bed (which he did
not)
it is
rumor
solely because I wish to give no basis for the that I made any sort of retraction of those catholic
principles, which I have defended against the Vatican heresies. If a stone is put over me, let it state that I was a catholic priest, and bear the usual emblemic Chalice and
Host."
Surely tear-compelling obsequies they were over the remains of this devout modem Christian mystic and loyal
member
God bless the saint, of his un-motherly church. for his modernistic work for the revivifying of her motherly instincts. Chalice and the
charity,
The
Host
inscription on the stone bears the and the following words: "Of your
pray for the soul of George Tyrrell, catholic Fortipriest, who died July 15th, 1909, aged 48 years. R. I. P." fied by the rites of the church. Surely a pious pilgrimage to that spot is due from all
modernists of
gathered about his death-bed and his grave, was his devoted friend and admirer Baron Von Hiigel. Upon him rests the manall
churches.
Among
those
who
modern Roman catholic mystics, free from most of their controversial and critical elements. We would fain write at length of this living and inspiring modernist and catholic mystic who is still in the Roman catholic church. But rather let his works be read "The Mystical Element of Religion, as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa" and "Eternal Life" and now, in a recent volume of "Essays and Addresses." In him we have religion and Catholicism at their best. With him and countless other mystics nurtured in, and loyal to, the Roman
tle of
the
church
whom
178
MODERNISM 1^
RELIGIOlSr
motherly instincts of that church, we can well see that she might be a refuge and home for many a Protestant
modernist.
Tyrrell had the one-tenth non-conformist conscience and had it strongly. But he also had a nine-tenths Roman
catholic conscience.
of his conscience
commanded
Roman
tion,
reformation, but never the destruction of the catholic church. He would endure excommunicasuffered,
which he practically
other than a
member
of
it.
That came out about the time of his death. We wonder what he would have done about it. Take it, we believe, as some of his fellow priests confessedly did, as a matter of mere lip service and thereafter observe external silence. Still we know that he
resolutely refused the conception of the catholic church which identified it as a whole with Rome's Official hier-
He He never
archy and her scholastic theology. Then we recall his last words: "I am glad that God is to judge me, and not any of his servants." God rest your soul, dear Father Tyrrell, and give you
further and larger service in His kingdom above, where His service is a perfect freedom, such as can be found in
CHAPTER
XIII
CONCLUSION
has passed unscathed through the conflict between science and religion aroused by
the enemy. They have also learned to know better what Another form of conflict is the essence of religion is. going on to-day the conflict between history and the
church.
This
is
may
be termed the
critico-historical
study of the Bible, the creeds and the church. How did they come about ? How did they grow ? The traditional conception of all of them was a static one. They were created once for all. The new conception is the dynamic one of continuous creation and that not exnihilo.
With
creative process is still going on. The historical spirit is regnant in all our estimates of creed and church. Moreover, many definite results have been reached by this critico-historical method of studying the Bible, the creeds and the history of Christianity. These results the man of
modem
culture
is
in conscience
bound
to accept.
Can
he make a synthesis between the new learning and the old faith? Or must he deny either the new or the old? The modernist does not wish to be an intellectual suicide, nor a religious matricide. He thinks, he knows, that he need not be either of these. With the historical spirit he accepts the old along with the new and there is no such conflict as that between religion and the history of In all conscience he feels the embodiments of religion.
179
180
MODERI^ISM IN EELIGIOl^
and the from the
bound
to follow the light of the new learning impulse to learn more. Here are some quotations
declarations
made
in the recent
They urge
this intellectual
vitality of the
church as ministrant to meeting the religious needs of educated people of the twentieth century "There is much that the fellowship of the church lacks
its
for
is
completeness of
life.
The tendency
good' is particularly strong in the church. Religious people are apt to feel the goodness of the old so much that
they are slow to prove whether there are yet powers of God on which they have never drawn ... As a result of
this,
may
do outside the church what they ought to have had opportunity to do, and to do better, within it" {Encycl. Letter,
p. 15).
are profoundly conscious that the Holy Spirit teaches Christian people by those age-long precedents which we believe to be the outcome of His guidance. But some-
"We
becomes our duty, faithfully retaining the lessons of the sacred past, in a very special sense to trust ourselves to His inspiration in that present which is our time of opportunity, in order that He may lead us into whatever fresh truth of thought or of action is in accordance with the will of God. For the Holy Spirit is with us and our generation no whit less than He was with our
times
it
{Lambeth Report, p. 95). "It will not do for us merely to repeat time-honored formula'. We have to state, and to state in terms which are real and convincing to the mind to our time, the fundamental truths of the Christian revelation. And the one and only condition on which these truths become convincing
is
all
As has been
said of Origen,
co:^rcLusio]sr
so
it
isi
must always be said of the guardians of tlie Faith: ^His faith was catholic and therefore he welcomed every
kind of knowledge as tributary to its fulness.' We are able wholeheartedly and without shrinking to welcome research, criticism, scientific investigation: we are ready to accept conclusions to the extent and within the limits which scientific reasoning and methods authorize" {Ihid., p.
the churches are seeking to do their duty in this matter and they intend to continue to do it in the face of all the opposition of traditionalism with its
all
118). Modernists in
Moreover they are incurably and fundamentally religious. They feel that they have a Gospel message for those who feel alienated from the church by reason of a conflict between the new learning and the old static forms of the embodiment of Christianity. These quotations from the Lambeth Report represent the lines on which modernists are working. Modernists maintain that historical criticism and scientific research are God's methods of teaching us much in this age. They apply the critico-historical method in their study of Bible, creed and church. They have no thought of renouncing loyalty
obscurantism.
to
tury learning.
certain results in their study of these historical authorities in religion, without losing
They reach
their religion.
They know
cated religious people who need the Gospel presented acceptably to them as well as to "the common people" and
who
are ready to hear it gladly. They feel that the church will be more ministrant to their spiritual life if she will
baptize into Christ all science and culture. The more we can learn about God's universe, physical and psychical, the more is our idea of God enlarged and our reverence increased.
The conception
182
verse
static
is
MODEHmSM
gone.
EST
EELIGION"
So too the conception of a fixed, stereotyped, embodiment of Christianity is bound to go. That
is
myth
often promoted by the ecclesiastical rulers of Christians. know how the Master found that the
We
men
an epochal period, we must expect epochal changes. Something new should be borne in the bosom of the old. That new, we might say, is the historical apIf this
is
preciation of the old giving birth to the new. Perhaps the chief and most vital new conception mod"^
ernists dwell upon, is that of a restored face of Jesus of the Gospels and His spirit and message and mission. The real
is
that they rise inductively and pragmatically to that of his Divinity. Again as to the Holy Scriptures, they find a book of records of God's word coming to
From
^x men
of
is
many
life.
The
Bible
a life-giving book, an inspiring book, but no longer a book of proof texts. The old creeds are historical monu-
They are to be interpreted in the historical spirit. We must esteem them in their spirit rather than in their As to polity, there is none that is to be accepted letter. The as a matter of more than relatively jiLS divinum. ideal is a democratic form. Here the equally jure divine form of the state has led the way, except at the Reformation. Here the state has as yet scarcely caught up with
ments.
the church.
pragmatic test must be applied. Are the conventional forms and ceremonies ministrant to the devout life? They are not to be changed lightly. The
As
to cult, the
and
clings best
But
COJSrCLUSION
183
the letter and endeavor to help others to do the same. Grateful for the letter that helps preserve and promote the
he cannot be its literal slave. Grateful for its needed function, he knows that it is the kernel that contains the life. Proud possessor of an old castle, he will live best as a modernist, the heir of all the Christian ages, while the slave of none. He will go back to Jesus of the Gospels, take him as Lord and Master, and then forward with Jesus in work for His kingdom, primarily on earth. He will learn much how He was Lord and Master to men of
spirit
other ages ; follow the protean Christ that won their hearts' devotion and yet have the fresh vision of His ineffable
face that to-day wins our hearts and our loyalty to
Him
Modernism
churches.
earth.
its
spirit
and
its
it
methods
is
in all the
Rome
has silenced
in her fold.
What
will
movement?
example of What will the Protestant Churches of America do ? the traditional and conventional forms are esteemed as the
ne plus ultra of a static institution, by the rulers of ChrisBittians, there will be modern forms of persecution. ter words will be uttered by members of both parties in
their polemical controversies. The regnant spirit of the Master will be dethroned by that of the enemy of that
spirit.
Church of England
Can we
way
of reconciliation?
Will not the leaders of both parties meet together as Christian brethren, and in the spirit of their common Master have a frank conference on the points of their disagreement? Otherwise it will be an unchristian fight to the finish for a party victory. I deprecate all the evils of such I want to see every form of the church kept a fight. comprehensive of the many dialects in which the Holy
Spirit speaks through many men of variant psychological temperaments and of variant world-views.
184
MODERNISM
IN^
RELIGIOIST
Some
His
see
of us have a medieval interpretation of Christ and church. Some hold the Reformation view. Others
best
under the interpretation that they are in conscience bound to give from their modern world-view. All Let there be a corir are devoted to the common Master. cordat between them. Let them try to dwell together in
it all
There is one God and Father of us all; one divine Master and Saviour of us all, and one Holy Spirit ever striving for the unity of us all. In the name and the spirit of the Master let us try to cast
and
political fellowship.
'No party out the devil of mere partisan contention. the whole. No partisan victory can be a catholic one.
is
But what
many
chiirch;
to
the
many
modem
world-view, whose conceptions, even in religion, cannot posI can readily imagine a sibly be those of other ages? cultivated modernist, desiring to become a member of the
church, arguing against the obsolete forms in which it presents the eternal protean Christ- He is well versed in the
knowledge of the first-century Jewish conceptions and can appreciate the way the early Christian Jews preached the Gospel to their fellow Jews. St. Matthew, and St. Mark
who
voiced the
way
St.
Peter preached
it,
in an obsolete dialect or in a foreign tongue. They showed that Jesus was really the fulfilment of their own ideals.
But
am
not a
Jew and do
Neither am the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews presented Jesus Neither so as to meet the needs of the Hellenistic Jews. am I a Greek, and greatly as I esteem the way the Gospel was presented to the Greeks, highly as I think of the Christological controversies through which the Greek thought fought its way to its ultimatum in the Nicene
a Jew.
co:t^CLUsio:tT
creed, I can only with difficulty follow their
iss
of preJSTeither am I
way
senting the Gospel, for I am not a Greek. a Roman and highly as I esteem the work accomplished by a Romanized form of the Gospel, I cannot accept it as
whole worldauthoritative, for I am not a Roman. view is as different from that of the Romans as it was from
My
ISTeither is
my
worldIf
men
of Reformation times.
you present the eternal protean Christ in the setting of any of these past world-views and demand my acceptance of Him in the form there given as authoritative and final,
then I do not see
my way
like to see Jesus robed in conceptions of the modern world-view. I should like to go straight back to Jesus of
would
the Gospels and see Him with mine own eyes, as the early Christians did. What can the Church reply to such a
brought to see the various stages of this progress of historical Christianity and to esteem them as stages. If he believes in institutions he may be brought to feel that a modernist should be the heir of all the stages of this progress. But he cannot be brought to feel that he is the Bid him then to accept his slave of any one of them. Christian heritage as does the modern inheritor of an old
castle with its various adaptations to the ages
through
to
But do not forbid him make any modern improvements. Do not demand that
which
it
in
theology he house himself in the chambers built in medieval or Reformation times. Enough if he can see how
men
of those
acceptance of their forms as final. With the historical spirit he would not be iconoclastic, but rather appreciative of the work of the spirit in
literal
Demand no
186
MODERNISM
modem
Allow
I]^
EELIGI0:N^
to use the
historical studies of the old church, him to use all the certain results of
modem
Biblical criticism in getting a fresh view of Jesus of the Gospels. He is a truth seeker and a truth lover.
Encourage further studies rather than frown upon him in his efforts to get back to Jesus and see Him with modem eyes. Seeing Him thus he will love and adore Him more. He is asking nothing more than the Jews asked of his early disciples. In some such way, I believe, many who are outside the church and that unwillingly, might be brought into her fold and greatly aid in making her a more living
church because more ministrant to the eternal religious need, as felt by men of modem culture. "Sir we would see Jesus !" That is what they are saying in their hearts. Why cannot they be allowed to see Him as best they can
!
through their
own modem
eyes?
THIS
RETl
BOOK
AN INITIAL FINE
This
OF
25
CENTS
Re
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE.
"^
JUI
SEP 12 1932
REC'D LD
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2
1956
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